...Huang Xu ESL 33B 2/3/2015 My Experience of English Learning As leaning English for almost fifteen years, I have to say I had a lot of experience of learning this language. Yes, I studied English for fifteens, it’s been a long time, but I still can’t speak English fluently. Honestly I don’t think my English is close to “fluently”, I think my English still can describe as “broken” or “fractured”, just like Amy Tan’s mother. The good news is I can feel my improvement, and maybe in years, my English would no longer be “broken”. Any way, as learning English for fifteen years, I always have some interesting things to share. There’s too much to talk about, like my favorite teacher, or the worst teacher I’ve ever met, or the experiences I went through when I first come to America. But because Amy Tan and Elizabeth Wong’s stories, I’d like to share the story about my first English teacher Mrs. Wu and my mother. So let me talk about Mrs. Wu first. I met her in the first year I went to elementary school. She is not the English teacher in school, and actually she was not the real first English teacher I met, but she made me interested in English. We already started to study English in grade one. However my parents thought the English that I learn in elementary school was too basic, and they thought English will be very useful. So they find me an English class outside the school, I met Mrs. Wu there. I didn’t want to have the class at first. I have no wish to learn a foreign language...
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...EH100 04/04/12 My English learning experience I was born in a non-English family. I started to learn English when I was in primary school in China. After that, I became gradually interested in this new language and, nowadays, my English level is continuing to improve. From my English learning experience, I have really learned many valuable things. First, it helps me realize not to give up halfway when facing difficulties. Also, it helps me know that I must take everything seriously. Thus, English actually has a significant effect on my life. Studying in the primary school was happy and easy for most of the pupils. For me, it was different. When I heard that I had to learn English in primary school, I was surprised and a little frightened. I was just a Chinese boy and I did not know the knowledge of reading and writing in Chinese very well. How could I learn a new foreign language? I still remember my first English class, and it was really a great challenge for me. In the class, the teacher taught us to say "Good morning" and "Good afternoon." At first, the teacher read the words slowly, and I knew how to pronounce them. Then the teacher asked us to read the sentences one by one, but I suddenly felt nervous and forgot how to read them. When it was my turn, I just read them ambiguously. After class, I felt ashamed, and I did not have confidence to learn English anymore. When I came home and told my mother what had happened,she encouraged me and told me that it was just a...
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...or someone's intelligence by her English. By Amy Tan • Art by Gabe Leonard I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others. I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language—the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And 1 use them all—all the Englishes 1 grew up with. Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a talk to a large group of people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen other groups. The talk was about my writing, my life, and my book The Joy Luck Club, and it was going along well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her. I was saying things like "the intersection of memory and imagination" and "There is an aspect of my Fiction that relates to thus-and-thus"—a speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, forms of standard English that I had learned in school and...
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...The path to english There i was on a sunny august day in st louis missouri, it was the first day of school and i was starting 5th grade my family had just moved to the U.S over the summer. I was feeling very anxious that day, i didn’t know weather i was ready for school here or not. I didn’t know the language, i didn’t know anyone, everything was just different here. It had been only few months since we moved here so i was still feeling homesick missing all my friends there, i really didn’t like being in United states at that time. There i was in a school in different country, with random people around me and not having any idea what to say. I had known very little english when i first came here, i could write a little bit and only knew few words like hey, or what's up. I came from India a non-english speaking country, to the United states ,a english speaking country. Since i didn’t even know a little bit of english they had to put me in a special class ESOL. It was a program to help the non english speakers learn how to read and write. I had a very nice teacher named Mrs. Taylor, she was an older lady in her 50’s. She was always helpful and nice to me, she’s basically the reason that today i am able to read and write and fully understand the language. I was struggling in the beginning but Mrs. Taylor helped me, she worked with me at my pace and helped me understand English better. I remember struggling through all my classes almost all the way to middle school, i wouldn’t...
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...Learning English I first arrived to the United States from the Dominican Republic on March 28, 2006. I remember it very clearly just like if it was yesterday. It was a cool afternoon. As I got off the airplane and into the airport I noticed how everybody stood out, talking a language that was unfamiliar to me, a language I could not recognize or understand. Learning something new can be a scary experience. One of the hardest things I have ever had to do was learn English. I was always afraid of trying new things, but I knew that being able to be literate in English was an important skill that I needed to have. Also, I thought that it would be a good thing to have English as my second language. After a while, I realized that learning English would be something that would need total dedication and a lot of hard work. New situations always made me a bit nervous and learning was no exception. My first day of school in the United States was at M. D. Fox in Hartford, CT. I was eight years old so I was assigned to the third grade. After I walked into my classroom, I sat timidly on my chair waiting for the teacher and the other students to show up. After a couple of minutes, the teacher came. She smiled and introduced herself. Her name was Mrs. Boatman. Shortly after students showed up. They all seemed so nice. As they were walking into the classroom they noticed that I was a new student, they all came up to me and greeted...
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...college at age 41, and take the English courses that will help me become a pharmacist, hasn’t forced me to be two people compared to John Gonzales’ situation. Actually, this decision helped me to have a better communication with my family and they support me very well. Also this decision helped me to communicate better with some of my friends. My oldest daughter is going to college. I remember when I was trying to ask her something about her college or classes she tried to ignore me. That time I got very mad at her because she didn’t want to answer me. I didn’t know she didn’t want to answer me because she was thinking it’s wasting time to talk about school with me. When I started the school then she explained to me that I wouldn’t understand it, if she explained anything about school. She explained that she is very happy now because she can talk about school with me. She said that I wouldn’t have any idea of what she’s talking about if she tried to talk about her classes or lessons. But now we talk about school almost every day. Now I understand that education is very important for me. We can solve our problems together and prove our education. She also help me a lot to learn English and vocabulary. I am so glad that my daughter’s education is high because they can help me. I really proud of them. My youngest daughter is going to high school and she is going to be graduating this year. She is very happy too and she helps me with my English classes. We usually discuss everything...
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...Professor Deare English 101A 09 March 2015 Take Home essay #1 In many different places of the world, many people have different reactions on what literacy is and how it is applied in life. Literacy is referred to a lot of people as “the ability to read and write” like how it is stated in the dictionary . People think that having the knowledge of how to read and write that they know the meaning and don’t have to have any more interest in it. After these few weeks of reading and comprehending the “real” meaning, it has changed the way I look at it and how it has actually affected me in life. Also how it can be referred to as a discourse because of the way many people today think the “English” language or any other language should be used. A discourse also can be referred to as standards a person should follow. It’s like what James Paul Gee tries to explain in his article Social Linguistics and Literacies , “The moral of the above discussion is that at any moment we are using language we must say or write the right thing in the right way while playing the right social role and (appearing) to hold the right values, beliefs and attitudes”(Gee 142).Literacy not only gives you the chance to read and write if not also the ability to communicate and express yourself to other people. I mean a lot of people can know how to write and read, but do they actually know how to speak it? Many people still don’t live up to the standards expected in a ...
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...day of IB English SL class. I always thought English was a subject where there was nothing to study. Throughout my time studying in the Indian Board, I considered English as one of the easiest subjects. But this was about to change. “Ms. Meredith Klein”, my professor’s name was written on the board with the class name “IB English Standard Level” under that with a bunch of other things written around it. As my teacher started describing the syllabus it was becoming my worst nightmare. She divided the two years of the IB program, into 4 parts and called each of the 4 units by a different genre. The funny thing was I just knew two types of genres at that time: fiction and non-fiction. The first one of the four genres she described was Classics. There were two big books I had to read for this, “The Scarlet Letter” and “The Assault” and study both the literary works intensively and at last present a detailed study of one of the book. This was another nightmare for me because throughout my life the only books I had read were a bunch of Famous Five and all in my fifth grade. I felt like it was the worst time of my life. All I did before my 11th grade was read summaries on the Internet and all of a sudden that proved as a waste of time in IB. It was not helpful at all. I knew the reading was extremely important and I still kept on procrastinating and read the books without understanding. The program was called a pre-university course and so it was extremely important for me to learn all...
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...Prof. Nelson English 49 09 May 2012 As a non-native speaker who immigrated to the U.S. two years ago, English is a big obstacle for me in communication. I have had many difficult times speaking and understanding English when talking to others. Writing an essay was almost impossible for me to think of. Realizing how difficult it was to experience these linguistic difficulties, I then decided to go back to school to improve my English skills. Therefore, English became especially essential for me to succeed in my educational goals. I was determined to earn an Associate’s degree then transfer to a university for a Bachelor’s degree. I started going to ESL classes and studied English very hard to make progress in my speaking, reading and writing skills. After spending one year in ESL classes, I qualified for English 43. I learned lots of grammar and how to write paragraphs efficiently during these classes. I noticed that writing an essay was more challenging when I got into English 49. However, since then I’ve learned how to write a five-paragraph argumentative essay which was one of my weaknesses in academic writings. I have made a lot of progress in writing skills since I started studying English 49. I now think that I’m ready to go on to English 101 due to the fact that I have learned useful strategies to follow a writing process and develop coherent paragraphs effectively. A writing process is the most important step that I learned in this class. First of all, before...
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...am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others. I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language -- the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all -- all the Englishes I grew up with. Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a talk to a large group of people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen other groups. The nature of the talk was about my writing, my life, and my book, The Joy Luck Club. The talk was going along well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her. I was saying things like, "The intersection of memory upon imagination" and "There is an aspect of my fiction that relates to thus-and-thus'--a speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English that I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home...
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...love everybody who loves me but there are a lot of frends In the world who are just fake. And I went to middle school at meadow park middle school for 6 & 7and half. Didn't like stoller because I missed my friends but guess what? All my friends didn't like me just because of my personality they decided to move on there life’s and I said oh NO my friends were just lying at me all the time my heart was Broken because I was with them for 2 years and that made me mad upset, sad and angry. 11/13/17 My friend said I'm sorry About what I did I said is OK because next time we have to know who’s a good friend and who’s a fake friend's but I hope that will never happen in my life again. Do you know why? When we were in sixth grade but in...
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...My Passion for English A close friend of mine suggested University of Phoenix as a good option for me to reach my goal of obtaining an English bachelor’s degree. This was a decision that has impacted my life in only a positive way. Before attending University of Phoenix I was unhappy with my previous schools. Transferring to Phoenix was a new beginning. The first class I completed was like no other I took in the past. I found my course challenging yet interesting, because the curriculum and interactivity with my learning team kept me motivated to complete it. From then on, I competed five classes back to back which has been the most consistent I have been with my courses since high school. So, my choice in attending University of Phoenix is one I am very grateful for. English as a language has become an essential form of communication in today’s society. Whether it is for a job or school, there is a growth of people who use and learn English from various countries. English lessens the barriers we have between cultures by helping people understand and connect with each other. Ever since I could read on my own at the age of three, writing and the arts has always inspired me. I grew up reading many genres of books and going to the library almost every day after school. That made me interested to create my own poems and short stories in a daily journal. To this day, English has captivated, and motivated me to pursue a career where I could use my skills to help other individuals...
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...when my family moved to America from Vietnam in 2010. I attended a good quality middle school in Oakland, where a lot of middle school students thought an Asian immigrant student like myself was bad at English in learning and communication. Therefore, they made fun of my accent, and the way I pronounced words in English. I was motived to show them that I could get better at communication. There was more to...
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...personal reasons. My experience is different from others. Before I even began the path to learn English, I thought about giving up. Later, when I was in that path, I almost gave up a couple of times. I struggled immensely in middle school; but not so much during my four years at high school. First, I gave up because I have heard that learning English was not easy. My old friends used to tell me learning English as your second language is very, very difficult almost impossible; “only few can make it,” they said. Second, my first day of school in this great nation was unpleasant. I considered that day, one of the worst days of my life. Looking back, now I consider it one of the great days of my life; because life without risks is no life. Third, my first two months at high school was like being in hell; because I was not being treated fairly by other students. The unpleasant moments I had during that two months was because of a lack of knowledge. Everything comes to an end sooner or later. When I was in Mexico. I wanted to learn English for a couple of reasons. One of them is because my parents wanted to bring me here to the United States to continue with my education. The other reason was because people that speak more than two languages have more opportunities in academic, professional, and/or in personal life. However, when I told my friends about taking an English class, they were shocked. They have been in this country and studied here, but dropped out from...
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...Immigrants Learning English What does immigrant mean? Immigrant is a person who comes into a country to live there. When immigrants come into whatever country, they have to learn a new culture and new language to integrate society in that country. In fact, language is the key of the culture, so learning new language in new country will help immigrants understand more about the typical culture’s in new country; each country has a different languages, and language is the most important thing to communication with native speakers so that it helps people understand each other. For example, if immigrants come to France, they have to learn French; immigrants move to China, they can learn Chinese; or if immigrants are resident in Spain, they must learn Spanish etc. Likewise, immigrants, who come into the U.S, can learn English; learning English is very helpful to immigrants in the U.S because they can communicate with somebody by English, get more opportunities and support their children. First, learning English helps immigrants can communicate with native speakers or...
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