I used the first strategy to create my sound work. I thought through the motivation and meaning of this assignment before I began to look for historical texts. Trying to personalize this sound work, I thought of myself as an international student who study abroad in the United States, and English is my second language. Also, listening is an important part to learn a new language. So I decided to make a sound work about the process and progression of myself and people around me learning English.

Then, I found an interesting text about Chinese Pidgin English, which is a contact language widely used along the coast of China in the 18^th and 19^th century. It was formed in a very restricted contact situation to fulfill limited communication need between English-speaking traders and their Chinese-speaking servants. Many linguistic features of this pidgin can be considered as contribution from Cantonese. So I recorded a dialogue between a Chinese shoe seller and an English speaker who is trying to buy shoes.

Starting from the earliest English form in China, I traced back my own experience in learning English. Since there are great differences between English and Chinese language system, we use phonetics to study English pronunciation. So for myself, phonetics is my first step to English, and I recorded the sound of reading English phonetics, which is mixed with the sound of Chinese Pidgin English.

Inspired by Pidgin English and my own experience of connecting English pronunciation with Chinese words, even if they have totally different meanings. Then, I found several texts about translation and transcreation between English and Chinese, especially Chinese poetry. The book Yingelishi wanders freely between Chinese and English, leaping over the gap between sound and meaning. So the first poem in this sound work is reading a poem in both English and Chinese.  They may sound similar, but the meaning is totally different.

Another obvious difference between these two languages is in the translation. The second poem is the first sentence from an ancient Chinese poetry, however, when it is translated in English, it sounds much longer. At this moment, the female voice reveals the progression of English study from pronunciation, words to translation. The last sound is a speech by a Chinese political figure, Soong Mei-ling, who was First Lady of the Republic of China. She attended a private school in Summit, New Jersey, and she graduated from Wellesley College in 1917. She was the first Chinese and the second woman to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. In 1942, she also conducted a speaking tour of the United States to gain support for China during the Second World War. So I mixed and added her English speech at the end.

My friends think that this sound work is funny, especially the first poem which made them laugh. And some of them said that they had the same experience.