A note

I returned home one day to find my dad has left me a note.
  
And suddenly it dawned on me that my father seldom writes in Chinese. Although he never had the chance to receive proper education (he studied in a primary school for one or two years only), he learned his English while working at an American firm. And since then, English has been his default written language.
  
I guess this, amongst other things, has made our family kind of "open" to foreign languages. While my parents were not the kind who speak to us in (bad) English and had never forced us to pointlessly memorize new words, we don't dislike English.
 
We watched English TV programmes and listened to English songs not because our parents wanted us to learn the language but simply because we enjoyed them. Of course that did help us learn new words and expressions but it's never forced and I think that's very important in second language learning.
 
I notice from my nephew and my friends' kids that nowadays children do have a tendency to "reject" English. My nephew hates it when I switch to an English TV channel. And he would always opt for the Cantonese dubbed version of his favourite Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks animations. Come dictation time, oh dear... This never happened to us.
 
I'm getting old, whinging too much haha ...
 
The society still acknowledge that English is important - or should I say getting good grades in English is very important. And so students simply go to a tutorial class to learn from those celebrity tutors all the tips and techniques to excel in public exams...