Master My Second Language

I had no knowledge of the English language or American culture. I never knew any other culture past my hometown’s. A fish out of water, I struggled as a first grader to learn the language, assimilate into the different culture filled with people with different physical features. I felt

We were crammed into a C130 passenger aircraft like a can of sardines. Barely able to move with my gear on my lap, I heard the announcement that we were preparing to land. My emotions were running high like everyone else around me.

I’m sitting alone at a table with a littered arrangement of Mr. Toad books in front of me along with some papers of mine. My bilingual teacher, Mrs. Mootz, pokes her head in to inform me that my mother is almost here. The fact that my mother was coming without me initially being notified was terrifying. Minutes later, my mom arrives. She and Mrs. Mootz sit on each side of me and my palms instantly become clammy. Mrs. Mootz gestures for me to open up the first book and asks that I begin reading. Page after page, I comfortably and smoothly read every sentence. One book, two, now three. Next, Mrs. Mootz reaches for the papers she selected, hands them to my mother, and asks her to take a look. The memoirs of a small child carefully penciled onto a sheet of construction paper, a short story about a spider web I noticed underneath a chair, written on a scrap of printer paper, and a paragraph about how much I enjoy apples were now in my mother’s hands. My mother had the same look of perplexity as she did two years ago at Brookshire’s. “This was you?!” she exclaimed

Attending a completely immersive school where I didn’t know the language, every class was a barrage of gorgeous words that I had no capacity to interpret. And as the situation was only temporary, I felt like an intruder in the other students’ lives. Cordiality was adopted with me, but I was mostly seen as a compelling figure that represented the America they had heard so much about. The immense change in my life overwhelmed me and had me begging to go back home everyday. I walked the streets, with their markets and indigenous people and festivals, while ignoring each morsel of custom that made up the region. I feel ashamed that I could be so ignorant as to squander the opportunity that had been given to me at such a young age. But as of now I can only search through my memories and hope to derive meaning from the experiences I did

Since Chinese was my first language, I was placed into English as a Second Language (ESL) in Kindergarten. As I wander to class, Mrs.Wilcox welcomes my peers and I with a bright smile on her face. I notice two massive metal cabinets dividing the room in half for a small friendly environment. I’m surrounding in colorful posters and an infinite amount of books. The blinds are up and I see the sun glisten upon the large pond overflowing with Koi fish. Moments later, a yellow duckling catches my eye as it splashes into the pond. My classmates and I all giggle as our teacher passes out cookies for everyone. From then on, I

After lunch one day in sophomore year, I met Miss Catalan in her classroom before I opened the door I saw her through the window standing next to her desk pointing at a white sheet of paper and talking about it to someone, when I came in Ms.Catalan asked me to help her explain a letter to my classmate Katherine, who had only been in the U.S for less than 5 months. I started translating, explaining to her what Ms.Catalan wanted her to know. and so Katherine started talking to me about how difficult was to learn and do good at school with the barrier of a whole new language. I understand how Katherine was feeling I had gone through the same thing. My teachers would call me even when I had my pencil, paper and concentration ready and ask me to

As a son of Mexican immigrant parents to the United States, I was privileged to learn an additional language of English. However, I did not begin to learn English until my scholastic years began because I was immediately taken back to Mexico. During the four years I lived in Mexico, I was exposed to what became my mother tongue of Spanish. Everyone around me was monolingual, so I was never exposed to the flavor of the English language; but once school began, I was exposed to an unknown world of English, my second language. Like many English learners as a second language, I was placed in the ELD (English Language Development) program where I soon acquired a distaste towards English. The reason for my dislike for English was because I spoke it

The Second day of school, I had to go myself on a school bus. My uncle dropped me at bus stop. I was hoping someone to help me. I was really scared on the first day of school officially. I didn’t know English. I was not exactly sure what to do. Everything was new for me, coming to a new country, going to a new school, and the new language. All students knew each other it seemed like I was the only person who didn’t know anyone. I tried to stop thinking about all this, and kept walking straight down the hallway. That’s when a teacher came to me and gave me a paper. The paper had some writing on it. It said, “Welcome to USA” in my language, Gujarati. That made me happy and comfortable. However, the teacher didn’t know Gujarati; she just used

He would teach me new words everyday and basic everyday conversations. Although it was hard at first, I slowly got the hang of it. However, the hardest part of it all was going to school. It was already bad enough that I didn’t know that much English, but I had to start school midway through the school year. As I walked into an American school for the first time, I was completely lost. I felt extremely out of place. Nobody looked like me or spoke the same language as me. I vividly remember walking into my 2nd grade class that day. Mrs. Blanks introduced me to everyone while I shyly looked down at my feet. I went to my seat and sat down, wondering when I could go back to the comfort of my own home. All throughout the day, multiple students would ask me questions but I would just randomly nod or shake my head to act as if I understood. This was what frustrated me the most; I had so much I wanted to say, but I couldn’t piece the words together.

I sat nervously on my chair, fiddling with my new sharpened pencils. First days of school were hardly any fun for me, I never enjoyed them. Mrs.Perryman, my new fourth grade teacher, walked in with a cheeky smile and a big black bow on her head. She pulled out a white piece of paper, and immediately my heart started to thump out of my chest. My breath hitched and it felt as if everything was slowing down. “Well goodmorning class, and welcome to a new school year! Let’s start off with attendance shall we?” This was the most dreadful part of the day, I wasn’t looking forward to this, knowing every teacher I had always misspronounced my name. “G-Glendale? I’m so sorry if I say it wrong. If I do, please feel free to correct me.” My eyes widened in shock and astonishment. For the very first time, a teacher pronounced my name perfectly without me having to correct them. I looked down and nodded my head shyly, indicating that she read it right.

Feared by the terrors of humiliation and disappointment, I worked twice as hard for my grades and fought my way through 7th grade, since I lost the courage to seek for the easier option. But during that summer, I decided to join a youth volunteer program from my church, where we helped organize events to help the less fortunate, in an attempt to face my barriers. The outskirts of Houston where we visited where rundown and ghetto, and a puddle of people often gathered up around the diner and set up tents and laid on the rusted benches, waiting for us to serve them food or for somebody to have a conversation with. Here, I was given the opportunity to talk with several people, who found my broken English as the least of their concern. They taught me the value of time, and the importance of developing a new identity, despite my fears of the “foreign” society, pointing out that the world around me will always be foreign unless I take the initiative to familiarize with

Mrs. Yarbrough introduced me to another aspect of literacy, writing. Writing gave me an outlet to express the ideas in my head. In the first week of school we were assigned a writing project. This assignment entailed of introducing ourselves and telling everyone in the class a little bit about ourselves in an attempt to get to know everyone. This was the first of many ‘get to know you’ papers in my academic future. Although none left quite the mark that this first paper had on me. I was really excited to write, but when Mrs. Yarbrough announced to the class that we were going to read our papers out loud to the class I felt a weight drop in my stomach. I really wanted to share what I had written with the world, well my class but at that point my class was my world, but I had a speech impendent that hindered me from pronouncing: th, t, l, r. I was worried that everyone would laugh at me. Somehow I got the idea in my head that because they were my own words that I had written they would sit as comfortably in my mouth as they do with everyone else. When the day had arrived for us to read our introductions I sat in anticipation proud and ready to share my work. I was still nervous. The butterflies in my stomach were threatening to come out the closer Mrs. Yarbrough got to my name on her list. Thoughts of ‘what if they don’t like it’ and ‘what if I’m a

As my search of the second language to write the analysis started, I wanted to find a language that I believe was more interesting that the ones I already know. Dart is a multi-purpose, garbage-collected, class-based, programming language that borrows the same C-like syntax as many modern programming languages out there. Dart was originally developed by Google and released on 2011. [1] The main usages of Dart are four; compiled as JavaScript to run in the Chromium web browser, stand-alone by using the Dart Virtual Machine, and ahead-of-time compiled into machine code. In other to run on the main-stream web browsers, Dart "relies on a source-to-source compiler to JavaSript", which is basically a type of compiler that takes the source code in one language as input, and output a source code in another language. This is the opposite to tradicional compilers, which translate between a high level language to a lower level, while source-to-source translate to a langauge within the same level of abstraction. In some cases, code written in Dart can run faster than the same code written using JavaScript. [1] [2] The Dart SDK brings a modified version of Chromium that includes a Dart VM which allows to run Dart on this browser. In my opinion, I believe that the target of Dart 's designers is to substitute JavaScript in the future. By allowing source-to-source compilation and integrating a Dart VM to the Chromium browser, I beleive this is an attempt to make people use Dart instead of

It is certainly true that English is the ‘lingua franca’ of the business world, however this does not necessarily equate to “I speak English, so I do not need to learn another language”. The movie ‘Lost in Translation’ received good acclaim in 2003 for the portrayal of two Americans meeting in Japan ponders over themes such as loneliness, alienation, struggles that mono lingual English speakers face when they are forced to rely on the language skills of others. Data suggests that English is spoken only by 4.7% of world population and learning a foreign language has far reaching effects such as increasing our global understanding, sharpen Cognitive skills, Increase employability potential, Increase changes of success while working or studying abroad and overall to appreciate and understand diverse cultures. My personal choice of a foreign language is Spanish.

The lazy days of the Summer were ending and day by day I was inching closer to my first day of school. The first day of school finally arrived, and I couldn’t wait to make new friends. There I was attending school and beginning a new chapter in my life. I sat there in the hard seat of my desk with my eyes full of amazement as I analyzed the classroom setting. After all the children were seated, the teacher, Miss Annette, handed out a blank piece of paper and announced the directions for the assignment. I looked around and all my classmates seemed to be doing what the teacher asked except me. In those moments my total interpretation of school changed because I realized that everyone knew English except me. Although I was born in the United