Kuala Lampur, June 23 -- In the heart of Xi'an, a city steeped in history and culture, I stepped into a classroom filled with university students eager to learn English.

I was there on academic duty, representing University of Malaya to teach English as part of an international collaboration.

Their spoken sentences were far from flawless.

Vocabulary was often misused, tenses were inconsistent, and their expressions occasionally bore the marks of direct translation.

Yet they spoke.

They asked questions, participated freely, and engaged without inhibition.

As a Malaysian English lecturer, I found the experience both stirring and eye opening.

These students lacked native fluency and grammatical finesse, yet they wielded a far greater ...