Ali Ahmed

03-06-2016

ENG 1121 – D465

Personal Narrative Essay Draft 1

                               The Experience of Learning a New Language

Once Mahatma Gandhi said, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” I have learned so many things in my life, but I will never forget the experience of learning English. Moving to the USA and learning a new language wasn’t easy because I had to learn the definition of each word, the pronunciation of the word and use the word in a sentence.

When I was in Bangladesh, the word “English” was hard for me to pronounce and read. My first language is Bengali, and I was in Bangladesh for fourteen years. I learned my mother language but not English. My uncles applied for our family to go United States and we all got the Visa. I didn’t want to leave my village and friends but I had to go with my family. After a few days we came to the USA when I was fifteen years old. I went outside with my cousin who was talking to his friends, and I was looking at them and feeling bad. I asked my cousin how I could learn English. He told me to watch television and go to the library. From that day I started watching the English channel on TV which was cartoons, movies, and news. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but I put the subtitles on. I still didn’t understand. I was wondering the whole night how I was going to survive in this country. The next day my parents were talking about my school which made me more nervous.

I started going to school in 9th grade, and I thought that I was blind because everything looked different to me. I was so upset, and I really wanted to go home because nobody was there to talk with me. The teacher was trying to talk to me, but I couldn’t talk to him. Fortunately there was a Bengali guy who helped me. He really helped me with everything. He translated for me and showed me everything. His name was Rashid, he became my good friend. I started hanging out with him and I asked him how I could learn English. He told me to talk English with everyone and don’t be shy or scared and to read books. I broought a book home and I started reading it as well as borrowingthe book; also I borrowed an “English to Bengali” dictionary from the library. Whichever word I didn’t understand I looked for it and found what the word meant. Also whenever I saw a hard word, I wrote those words in a notebook and wrote the word’s meaning. The teacher started giving homework which looked really hard for me, so I asked Rashid to help and we did the homework together and he explained it to me. From the homework, I saw some hard words so I wrote those hard words in a notebook and wrote the meaning. When I got home I read the word and read word, like ten times. However, I didn’t learn English perfectly yet, but there are more steps to go.

The biggest change was in junior year during my internship which was about teaching kids. When I was in eleventh11th grade, I had to do a internship in a school. The first day I went to my internship I was really upset because I had to talk with everyone and be friendly. I was sitting down, and then the teacher said, “Don’t be shy or scared, you have to talk with everyone.” So I started talking with the students and being friendly with them and reading books with them. There were some words that I didn’t understand so I asked the teacher and learned from her. I went to elementary school in Bangladesh but not in USA. In AmericanUSA elementary school they teach word definitions which was really helpful for me. I had to talk a lot; from that I learned to talk in professional language. I will never forget how much I learned from the internship.

The process of learning english wasn’t easy because first I had to learn the definition of each word, pronunciation the word and use the word in a sentence. In your life if you don’t make mistakes then you will never learn anything. I made a lot of mistakes in my high school and I learned from it. Also I learned English by talking with my friends. I had a hard time when I couldn’t speak English but now I feel really proud. I feel really proud when I talk with someone in English. If I had a chance to make my ideal world then I would make every country should be same as the USA so people don’t have to came to thecame USA tofor study and learn a new language.