Building Confidence

I was born in a country located in Central America, where the official native language is Spanish. Like many immigrants, the time came when I had to start learning English as my second language. I learned my first words in English in school by reading children’s books which helped me improve my language skills, however, there came a time when I realized that I still had a hard time speaking and understanding conversations in English. My family could not help me although they tried to support me by teaching me the little that they knew. I mostly had to figure things out on my own. Learning English has been a difficult task for me that sometimes I feel dumb because I know people that learned English in a couple of years. Every time that I want to make a conversation in English I feel like a different person. I get nervous which makes me mess up the words and my brain stops working. Also when speaking English I often think that people would make fun of me which makes me feel insecure. To improve my English, I am trying to have the same confidence as when I speak Spanish because I believe that it can help me to better express myself and I would be able to talk to other people which can help build my English skills. Writing English also has been difficult to learn because many of the words sound the same for example tree and three or bird, bear, beer, and beard to me all of those words sound the same which makes me struggle a bit but I had amazing friends that had helped me with my writing skills they often the right way to spell words or correct my grammar. Learning English has been a challenge but I am feeling confident that one day I will be able to build and speak full conversation and confidence just like “my Spanish self”.