I was born in America but growing up I always spoke Polish. When I got into school, my English was not so great. I did not like to read a lot as a kid and my teacher would tell my parents and they would make me read. On Saturdays from pre-K, I will go to Polish school to keep up my Polish language as it was perfecting my English five times a week. Every time I would draft essays in elementary, we would peer review and I would have comment about my trouble with spelling. I would not know the difference between “their” “there” and “they’re.” When I would speak in English, I would not correctly put words together to create a sentence.
This was causing me a lot of trouble when trying to Level up my reading. I was then put in an ESL class. At first, I did not like it because it would make me miss some of my lunch with my friends. After a couple more times I would attend ESL, I started to like it as we got to read more different books and my teacher would encourage us to do better and bring in things to signify what we were reading about. This encouraged me to read more books at home and in school. As I got more comfortable with reading, I would read bigger books with more passages and write about them for myself to see how I have succeeded. Getting tutored the way I did in ESL was the best thing that could have happened to me in my elementary school life was that it changed me as a person to read more and write better.
Hiii Kinga, I totally understand how you’re feeling I also struggle with English especially it being your second language. For me Spanish was my first language making it really hard to have to learn a whole new language which can sometimes be frustrating.
You have good material here; you could have the beginning of a story about your education here.
However, notice that you are mainly telling. Instead you need to SHOW me. You need to turn some parts (the best parts that stand out in your memory) into SCENES. Create theatre of the mind!
So — you write: When I would speak in English, I would not correctly put words together to create a sentence. CAN YOU SHOW ME what this was like? What did you say exactly — what was the incorrectly joined words that came out of your mouth? ALSO what age/grade were you? Describe your feelings.
You write: I was then put in an ESL class. At first, I did not like it because it would make me miss some of my lunch with my friends. After a couple more times I would attend ESL, I started to like it as we got to read more different books and my teacher would encourage us to do better and bring in things to signify what we were reading about. CAN YOU SHOW ME this ESL class? What did the room look like? What was the name of your teacher? What were the other students like? How old were you? What was the book that made you “start[ed] to like” reading in English?
Look at the student example essays. YOu will get ideas from reading what other student wrote for their Ed Narratives.
How is this writing responding to the SAVED writing prompt? WHAT saved you? It’s not clear from what you wrote here that there is some activity that saved you. Remember how ROTC saved Colin Powell?