Practice Makes Perfect — By 花骨朵Lei

王兵

As soon as I joined this Running + Reading English Study group, I fell in love of English study immediately. Being a new student, I have a lots to catch up. Well, here comes this week's writing theme: Movie.

Being a single mom and holding a professional job, I don't have much time to watch many movies, however there are a few movies being my favourite and influenced my life in somehow.

At beginning two classic movies jumped into my mind:'"Gone with the Winds"'and "The God Father". For these two, I did not only watch the movies but also read the novels many times. When I was in blue, that famous sentence from "Gone with the Wind" always reminded me: "After all, tomorrow is another day! ". Then I would start to collect myself. There was a period of time, I thought I had the same characters as Scarlett- never give up.

I was just going to go to that direction, suddenly another name popped up: "When Harry Met Sally". Wow, how could I forget this movie, one of the funniest I have ever watched. It is a 1989 American romantic comedy film, written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner. It stars Billy Crystal as Harry and Meg Ryan as Sally. The film raises the question "Can men and women ever just be friends?" and advances many ideas about relationships that became household concepts, such as "high-maintenance"'and the "transitional person". The film is ranked 23rd in100 Laughs list of the top comedy films in American cinema and number 60 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".

But back to 1997, when I bought the DVD, I had no idea what kind of movie this one was. That was a year after my late husband passed away, I started to think seriously about my future. To be a single mother and raise a 3-year-old boy alone could be a big challenge. Back then as a university teacher, my salary was not enough to support myself, how could I bring my son up? During that period of time, many people including some of my friends and classmates went to or were planning to go overseas, especially those who worked in university. Finally I decided to take the same path.

My first step would be studying English. In summer of 1997, I went to Beijing to attend TOEFL training courses in New Oriental English School. In there, the English teacher recommended this movie to us. He said watching this movie would help to improve our listening skills.

I was unable to watch this movie until two months after I returned to my home in Jinan. I always remember that I was stunned to watch it the first time. For about two hours, I got almost nothing because the speed of the dialogues between Harry and Sally was super fast,  at least two times faster than normal. At that point, I realized there was a long way for me to go just be able to understand what they were talking about. I was worried and discouraged since I didn't know how long it would take. What should I do then? I remembered: Practice makes perfect! From that day,  it became my routine that as soon as I got home, I would turn on the VCR to play this or other English movies while doing my housework and listening English at the same time. English became a background just like music. And there were countless times that I felt asleep with the movie on.

Till today, I still remember many interesting scenes in this movie. For example, Sally faked an orgasm in a restaurant while having lunch with Harry. Then a woman on the next table asked the waiter: " I'll have what she is having. "  This scene was shot at Katz's Delicatessen in Manhattan. And till today, Katz's Deli still hangs a sign above the table that says, "Where Harry met Sally... hope you have what she had!" Next when you visit New York city, maybe you can find an hour or so to have the same order.

Now even though I have been living in Canada for almost 20 years but my English seems hasn't improved much, and definitely far from perfect,  because I have been laid back and taken everything as granted. Not like old days, now studying English becomes very easy. There are many kinds of media,  e.g. internet, radio, TV, etc. Seems it's time to pick up again. Just like this journal, I have been editing again and again since the initial version. It's getting better and better.  Practice makes perfect! Isn't it?