Learning a New Language
Hey yall, I’m a student from UIUC. I just finished a paper about my personal experience on how I learned English for my rhet class, so I want to share this with all non-native speakers.
Feel free to contact me @ wli9@uiuc.edu if you have any questions. Hold you enjoy it and learn something from me! ^_^
I immigrated to the U.S. with my family when I was 17, and that time, I had just graduated from middle school in China. Moving to a different country was a big challenge for me because the culture and the language were totally different from where I used to live. I met with unfamiliar people and learned their way of life. Since my English was limited, I started as a freshman in high school. On the first day I came to my high school I felt isolated from everyone because all of the others spoke English, and I didn’t get a single word about what they talked to me about. Almost all the people in that school were Hispanic and most of the students were immigrants. I was one of only two Chinese students in this school, so it was difficult for me to communicate with the majority of the other students. This made it harder for me to make friends and get them to help me adjust to this new lifestyle. At that moment, I was so frustrated and embarrassed. At last, I gave them a piece of paper to let them write down what they wanted to say to me. Then I looked up in my dictionary and translated what they wrote word by word. However, I couldn’t respond to them because I did not know how to pronounce any word.
I made up my mind to study English diligently. To do so, I needed to take ESL course, which helped non-native English speakers improve their skill in using English. I was the only Chinese student in the class, and most of my classmates were Latino students. The ESL course can not help me learn English directly because the teacher can only explain the class materials in English and Spanish, but not Chinese. So I paid more attention to the teacher’s body language, in order to help me understand what she tried to say. This environment forced me to use the language more often. The more I practiced, the more I understood what the teacher and other students were talking about. That made me big progress in the first step of learning English.
The second year in high school was the hardest year for me. But at the same time, it was also the most fruitful year in my improvement of English. At the beginning of that term, my teacher recommended taking some honor courses. It was a challenge because I was not a native English speaker, but those courses required a high level of reading and writing skills. The reading and writing assignments were difficult because almost half of the vocabulary was unfamiliar for me. To stay in honors I had to become more familiar with the language. Finally, I came up with a strategy. When I encountered some unfamiliar words, I looked them up in my dictionary, and wrote them down on my note cards. I carried those cards everyday and tried to study them whenever I had time.
However, it was more important to know how to use these words in daily life than just knowing the meaning. At the beginning, I was shy and afraid of talking loudly in front of others because I didn’t know whether I used the right word or pronounced the word correctly. I also worried about whether people could understand me and how could they react. I cared about how others react to my English because I was afraid they may laugh at my poor expression or strange accent. So I was trying to escape from speaking in English. But gradually I realized that language was part of my life, and it was a tool to help me connect with this new culture. So I made up my mind to look for a way to improve it. Therefore, I started to use a recording machine and tried to speak loudly at home, and practiced reading a paragraph everyday. Actually, I could now hear how terrible my pronunciation was, but learning by doing, gradually helped me change the way I spoke. Moreover, I screwed up courage to talk with Americans. It was helpful because I could learn from their pronunciation and the way they spoke and at the same time broadening my vocabulary.
What I did most of the time was translation. As a non-native English speaker, I always thought in Chinese first, and then translated it into English. I gradually realized this was one of the biggest problems I was hading with learning the language, because these two languages had different ways of thinking. The difference in tense between Chinese and English was a good example. In English, we should change verbs to their past tense when we wanted to express an action or a condition that occurred in or during the past. But in Chinese, we only needed to add some adverbs to describe that. After a while, I tried to think in English, instead of translating word by word.
Knowing how to use language was more important than knowing vocabulary on the flash cards. I had participated in the science fair for three years, since my sophomore year in high school. From the first one, I realized the importance of language more deeply because I needed to explain my project and my idea in front of judges. I still remember the first time when I was trying to explain my project; I shivered because of my poor English. I didn’t know how to present my idea exactly. After I got the comment, “Lack of English�, from the judges, I felt so frustrated. I spent so much hard work on it, but it failed just because of my poor expression. I realized I should try my best in my English, because language was tool to communicate and to express things. So having a good language skill could help me to explain my work to the judge cleanly. Gradually, I started to get some return from my hard work. From the school fair to regional fair, and finally to the city fair in my senior year, I was really proud of myself when I received my award on the stage, not only because I won the competition but also because people confirmed my hard work because they could comprehend my idea from my presentation.
Throughout my experience in learning English, I realized that leaning English helped me connect with the new culture and helped me make new friends in daily life. The better I speak the more confidence I had in front of others. From the hard time in my learning English, I knew how to face with other difficulties in my life. From learning English, my life changed gradually. I comprehend more and more about American culture and paid more attention to the society. And I made many new friends, which broadened my view and brought me much fun. I enjoyed my life more than before. But I know that is not enough for me. I’ll try my best to do it better.