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■ Lydia Lui
This summer is exceptionally hot! The temperature recalls a piece of interesting memory about learning English, which I share with others a lot. I call it the "Go Ahead!" story.
That was one very hot summer. I was a junior secondary student and had to interview foreigners in the street. It was a group project in the English subject. We had to learn to design a questionnaire (問卷) and conduct a survey (調查).
I was nervous about it. Like most Hong Kong students, I did not have many chances to use English in daily life. I was also not a talkative person. I would not dare talk to strangers in my mother tongue. How could I imagine myself talking to strangers in English in the street? There's nothing we could do except to be really well-prepared.
We spent a lot of time practising inside and outside the class. We memorised a list of expressions for starting an interview, questioning, clarifying ideas, etc. We thought of plenty of interview situations and tested our coping strategies in role plays. Everything seemed just fine. It was the hardest to start the interview, so we had limited our lines (對白) to which led to manageable (易於處理的) responses:
Q: Excuse me, could you spare me a few minutes, please?
A: Yes.
Q: We are doing a survey on "Tourists' impression of Hong Kong". Do you mind answering a few questions?
A: No.
Q: Thank you! My first question is...
I had already been learning English for ten years by that time like anyone else. I thought the answer to a yes/no question had always been and must be "yes" or "no". If the answer was yes, I knew I could continue; if no, I could simply thank them and leave to search for another interviewee (受訪者). I was young and naive (無知) and didn't know that there was a third answer until the first interviewee:
Q: Excuse me, could you spare me a few minutes, please?
A: Yes.
Q: We are doing a survey on "Tourists' impression of Hong Kong". Do you mind answering a few questions ?
A: Go ahead !
Q: ...
"Go ahead"? We didn"t have this phrase in our list! "What words are these?", I asked myself and couldn't figure(判斷), "We had endless practices but had never come across (碰上) this problem!". I wasn't able to respond. I was scared, "Go? A head? (去你的頭?) How rude!" This is not possible for a foreigner to think this way but I couldn't help but associate these words with a direct Cantonese translation of "go away, bonehead(笨蛋)!"
I stood there and stared at the foreigner and he also stood there and stared at me. I thought to myself, "He is not leaving! Why is he not leaving? Those alien words (「外星文字」) must be a closer answer to "yes" than "no" and he is now waiting for me to ask questions! This must be it!" So, I went on to ask the questions as if we had agreed on it. It worked! We finished our first questionnaire.
In the other interviews, most of the people gave us "go ahead" instead of "yes" when they agreed to complete the questionnaire with us. We assumed this meant "yes" and successfully went on to complete the whole process with the other interviewees. We then started to realize that "go ahead" was a common answer, much more common than the standard answer "yes" to this kind of yes/no questions in conversations. We just didn't expect such a common phase had never come up (提及) in our long and good preparation with our teacher.
Later, I heard that teachers started adding this phrase into the long list of expressions. And I have never heard any more embarrassing experience of this kind from the younger generations. I optimistically think mine has made some contribution !
Every time when I tell this story again, I am more and more certain about its value. This embarrassment felt bad at that moment but it has become an important piece of memory in my course of English learning. We learn English as a foreign language. We analyze the language and learn the logical use of it. But language is always beyond logic. If the foreign language does not work in line with (一致) our logical expectation, it is not its fault. If we examine our own language closely, we will also see a lot of usage that is not "logical" but it makes sense. That's why I am thankful for being embarrassed because that started my journey on exploring English as it is. It says," Go ahead ! By trial and error, you learn !
Summer is a time to start something hot (刺激的). The school bell has rung. Go ahead!
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