I was born and raised in a small town, Prince Rupert to be exact.  I lived on Prince Rupert Boulevard and went to Prince Rupert Senior Secondary.  Need I say more?  Oh ya, my parents immigrated to Canada in the late 60’s, so the English language was not a strength of theirs either.  Bottom line, I read only one novel to completion during my high school career and pleasantly surprised to pass English 12.

Back to UBC… also, back in the day… all UBC students had to pass the ECT, the English Competency Test to graduate.  The ECT was UBC’s version of the LPI (Language Proficiency Index).  All that I know is that I failed the ECT twice, along with English 100.  It was a hat trick of failure.  Yes, I managed to return back to UBC for my second year, but I was also back to English 100… and the ECT.

I love the old wives tales that loomed around campus regarding the ECT.  A commonly told story was that you passed the ECT if your paper landed face-up from the clock tower.  Some people would say you couldn’t get into third year and others were worried about graduation.  I had to pass the ECT.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, I registered for a continuing education course called “How to Pass the ECT.”  That was a selling title… SIGN ME UP.  I rode my bike there, in the snow, up hill both ways… It was the best $80 I had ever spent.

The most memorable moment was the first class.  There were a couple of dozen people sitting at tables formed into a horseshoe.  The instructor was an English graduate student.  OK.  I was ready to learn.  The class began with introductions.  We shared our names around the horseshoe.  Curious, the instructor asked us to go around the horseshoe again to answer the following questions:  (1) What country do you come from?  (2) How long have you been in Canada?  (3)  What is your first language?    

My answers:  (1) Canada  (2) All of my life.  (3)  English.

Everyone else responded with (1) Any other country but Canada.  (2) Less than one year.  (3) Any other language but English.  This class was an ESL class.

English as a Second Language… but English is my first language… next to slang.  The instructor pulled me aside to ask me if I wanted to change sections, but I wanted to stay.  Can you hear the song from Sesame Street?  “One of these things is not like the other…”  If I really knew how to write, I would have passed English 100 and the ECT.

The 10-week course was the best English course I ever took.  I started to see patterns in the grammar  and sentence construction.  I’ve always hated what my former teachers would say to me about editing my essays… “read it out loud and you can hear it.”  When your parents are ESL, you hear nothing.  Anyway, I was a star in this class… and loved it.

Happy ending… I passed the ECT on my third try, I passed English 100 with 56%, and graduated from UBC.  You do what you’ve got to do to get where you want to be.