When I said He, what I meant was...

"She quitted his job, took three-month holiday and went to France. She then later went to a Le Cordon Bleu school to follow his passion as a pastry chef... "

"...wait, is the person a he or a she?"

This is not an uncommon question you would ask when you have a conversation with a native Chinese speaker.

One day, I was in Causeway Bay on my way home, a foreigner asked me for direction, "excuse me, do you know where the Discovery Bay pier is?"

"It was in Central near IFC mall."

He looked a bit puzzled.

"Sorry! I meant 'it IS in Central'!!! Yes... present tense!"

You don't have to be a fluent Chinese speaker to know that saying "he" and "she" in spoken Chinese are the same; and in Chinese language, there is no tenses.

Many people here in Hong Kong started learning English when they were about 3 or 4. Some people even learnt to speak English before Cantonese.

We are expected to write, read and speak English on a decent level.

I think many people who are learning a second language share a similar situation- it seems fine when longer time is given to us to construct a sentence. However, when we are in a situation that requires an INSTANT RESPONSE, we make more mistakes. Our brains are not fast enough to construct a "perfect" sentence.

If you are Chinese, you might miss out the "s" after a plural noun; or forget to change the tense of a sentence when it is a past event; or missaying "he" when it is actually a "she"...

If you are a native English speaker, you might put the time word at the end of the sentence (In Chinese, a time word is generally placed in front, or after the subject.); you might add an unnecessary article in front of a noun.

How can we train our brains to think faster? You have to speak and response, try to have conversation with native speakers; hitting language or grammar books all the time won't bring you anywhere close to fluent level.

A student of mine who also speaks fluent Japanese, told me that he practiced Japanese while spending nights in Japanese bars talking to local people over drinks. Now living in a city surrounded with not-so-patient people, he tries to "annoy" the taxi drivers...