"It is in my opinion what most parents regret not to be able to learn enough when we were at school. This is particularly true for the English language. After we graduated and entered society, we are faced with the reality that understanding and knowing how to speak English is very important. This realization shaped the standards that we set for Anita’s elementary school education. As parents, we don’t wish to put too much pressure on her by setting the bar too high, and as long as her grades aren’t too bad that is fine with us. However, an exception to this would be for English to which we pay special attention. One of our greatest fears as parents is that Anita would grow to reject English, because of the pressure that we placed on her to excel in that subject. Fortunately, Anita quickly adapted to the teaching method that the place we enrolled her in for English classes utilized. Lion and Lion, the place where we enrolled Anita for her English classes, utilized an English technique that is more relaxed than what other English tutoring places utilized. We were worried that such a relaxed teaching method would greatly diminish the quality of education that Anita will receive, but until now both Lion and Lion and Anita has continuously met and sometimes exceeded our expectations. Generally speaking, children who can learn by themselves are really rare. Of course, Anita is not an exception to this rule. In addition to attending both regular classes at school and extra classes at Lion and Lion, I borrowed a lot of Chinese and English picture books from the library to increase her exposure to the English language. It is even better if the book came with an audio CD. In addition to reading at home, we can also make Anita “listen” to English on the way. Although Anita can’t understand most of the words, listening to the audio would allow her to get used to the pronunciation and rhythm of the English language. By stimulating Anita’s interest through fascinating content from the picture books, we are encouraging her to learn English by understanding the new vocabulary appearing in the story. After Anita reached third grade, we expanded the materials to children’s story books, bibliographies of famous people, and world famous books. We hope the materials that Anita learned at school, and the progress that she has made at Lion and Lion would increase her understanding of the English language. Another regret of most parents is the inability to speak English properly. It is for this particular reason that we greatly encourage Anita to participate in the regularly held English-related competitions by school and Lion and Lion. These competitions will immensely help in the development of children’s self-confidence, and the encouragement of the parents is always helpful in increasing their courage in participating in these types of competitions. In addition, the Cambridge English testing review is one of the activities where we actively encourage our children to participate. Lion and Lion organizes a review class on a weekly basis to ensure that the students are prepared for the test. Before the day of the test, Lion and Lion would also hold a mock test to check how prepared the students are. In the test, the errors are marked and reviewed so that the students can understand and answer correctly during the formal test. We usually use a translation software to better understand the word, and then we will share what we understood with Anita and discuss about it. In addition to strengthening Anita’s understanding, it also helps improves the English ability of us parents. Children who can learn on their own are very rare that is why I think helping and guiding them is really crucial. It will help make them slowly develop a habit of studying, and once that habit has been developed, learning English will become a much smoother process. I think everyone will like this, because every parent’s goal is to let their children accumulate skills and abilities that will allow them to overcome every challenge that they will face in the future."