any percentage is good (:

was reading sti and saw this article relating minister lui’s personal experience.

‘I know my tutors would rather (have me being) able to speak 70 per cent (of the time) in Mandarin and 30 per cent in English… than not to speak Mandarin at all because I’m too shy to do so,’ he said.

yes … even if it’s is 10%, or 5%, or 1% of the time is fine (yes some pple might argue about too low a percentage). the difficulty probably lies in the NEED to converse in the language. fundamentally language exists to facilitate communications. if one language is sufficient for my daily communication needs, finding reason(s) to self-generate the NEED to use another language is often difficult.