There are several anecdotes that comes to my mind when I think of education. One of them is when I was in elementary school, I realized I could not pronounce “shoulder” or “soldier” properly. I tried to always avoid the two words (I still do sometimes). When I grew up, there was a song that became very popular. It’s called “Crank That” by Soulja Boy. The rapper called himself Soulja Boy and I thought, it sounds very similar to “shoulder” and “soldier.” For a short period of time, I pronounced shoulder and soldier as “soulja.” I didn’t think anyone would notice. I couldn’t say “soulja” forever, so I practiced saying the two words using Google and. Youtube. I successfully learned how to pronounce “soldier” and “shoulder.” Looking back at how I would say “soulja” for the words “shoulder” and “soldier” is funny. I was young and it was a short term solution for my mispronunciation. I didn’t seek for help and tried figuring it out myself.
Another anecdote that comes to my mind is when I wrote my first essay and received a feedback that I needed a hook sentence. Coming to a new country, I had no idea what a hook sentence was. I’ve never heard of such thing. I learned about hook sentences by googling of course. I learned about a new technique in writing. It’s an opening to attempt to grab the reader’s attention, that way they’ll want to continue reading. Earlier during this course, we learned about different writing techniques, such as a quote, or question, or something funny. That is basically what it is – a hook sentence. I was embarrassed that I didn’t know the term that was used for a strong opening statement as a “hook sentence.” Thank goodness for Google.
