Paris Personal Statement

Again I was struggling not to let myself down and to learn the concepts of the new country. At first everything was hard; I had a lot of difficulties on all my classes due to the lack of reading and understanding the language. I remember when my 7th grade English teacher handed me the book “A Child Called It” by Dave Pelzer; I was stuck in the first page “I’d never realized so many words existed!”(Malcolm X 432).I kept solving my problems by myself, using the dictionary, searching words on the internet, and comparing some Spanish words with English ones. For some reason I didn’t like when people tried to translate and when the school tried to assign me Spanish tutors. I felt that getting help in Spanish wasn’t any good and it just disrupted my learning. Even though school was hard “I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky.” (Alexie 447).I accomplished my goal of passing 7th grade. During the summer I used to go to the library and read books, because I didn’t understand most of them, and I found reading in English innocuous for the first month. After I got the handle of reading and writing once again, I felt confident of myself, and my life came back to normal.

For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author

Arriving in a new country was exciting and discomforting. America is a wonderful place to live, which is full of adventure and challenges. I was attracted by the Western culture. Meanwhile, different languages also troubled me. Although I began to learn English in elementary school from ABC, my listening and oral abilities tend not to be adequate. I have to study hard to improve my English, so that I can understand what the people said.

Moving to Canada was the toughest days of my life. People in my country believe that my education would be increased and I became a better person. On the contrary, not everything happened in an instance. I have to undergo in a lot of difficulties to achieve my goals. I kept saying to myself that I might change my mind to give up on school and become an alcoholic or a drug addicts. But, my conscience told me to follow my dream. Difficulties I faced in Canada were orienting me to this new place. However, the toughest one of all was the language barrier. In my country, it’s mandatory to learn English and French considering the past of colonization in my country. If I don’t study those languages in school, the government could sue my parents. Likewise Creole was my native language which consisted of French and African words. To contrast, the English taught in my country was insignificant compared to Canada. It put a lot of stress on me as well as my parents. But after two years, I managed to get out of this weight. My main sourced was reading many books that were an advised by a teacher. This definitely changed my life and overcome this shyness. After all, the fear of failure from not having a better future and no reputation made me kept on in

After so many incidents, I was determined to learn this foreign language and prove to people that I wasn’t not lost in this country. Every day afterschool I would ask my family to help me with my English. One year later, I was able to understand what people around me were saying, and I could do basic communications with people. School came to me as an enjoying part of my day, something I looked forward to when going to bed, and an opportunity, a gift for me to learn the language of this new country.

Learning a new language seems to have only positive effects. However, for a Mexican American, accomplishing this goal brought him drawbacks in the interaction with his family. In his essay, ‘’Public and Private language,’’ Richard Rodriguez describes the difficulty in learning a new language and the sacrifice he makes to accomplish his goal. Richard Rodriguez shares the difficulty for older people, as they learn a new language; however, for younger generations is easier to learn a new language. Also, the new language creates a lack of communication for Richard Rodriguez.

Initially, I was an Ecuadorian girl that had a Christian family, I grew up surrounded by my family and loved ones. My cognitive development was in progress, and I had created fundamental bonds in Ecuador. Provided that my dad is an American citizen and due to his work in America, he could not spend too much time with us in Ecuador, so, my mom, my little brother, and I immigrated to America. After three years of my life, our family reunited, and I became an Ecuadorian-American. Since I was very young, assimilating the changes came to be unnoticed, if it weren’t for the fact that during the next years I spoke Spanish at home and English at school. As a result, my translations of these languages affected my communication, creating slow comprehensive

“One of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time”, Federico Fellini once stated that “A different language is a different vision of life” and I, in my turn tend to say that he was perfectly right. A person who speaks more than one language can experience multiple personalities, visions and reflections consisting which language is he speaking. High School students should comprehend the real benefit of speaking a foreign language. Being a multilingual myself and speaking fluently four languages and studying another two, I consider that I am qualified enough to persuade that my argument is strong, plausible and not ultimately-right. In the following paragraphs I am going to address the following three reasons why should other High School students learn at least one foreign language? Firstly, learning a new language enhances performances in the academic domain and makes you smarter. Secondly, knowing a new language is a high estimated and a very valuable characteristic in your professional CV. Thirdly, international travel is more pleasant through knowing a foreign language.

I am a Brazilian-born Chinese, who is currently a seventh grader at the Bement School. Before coming to the United States four years ago, I grew up in Sao Paulo, giving me the opportunity to be a polyglot. I attended a Portuguese and German bilingual school, and went to a Chinese school in the weekends. In the Bement School, students take world language, and I chose Spanish classes. Oftentimes, when I hear either a word in Chinese, Portuguese, or German, memories of my childhood floods into my mind. Consequently, the memories of my past, brings me feelings of my home in Brazil.

I am especially interested in the Summer International Travel Grant and Civilizations Core programs, as it is my dream to one day conduct independent historical research in Paris. French history, as well as general European history, is something that hold very dear; it is both fascinating and inspiring, and I have a boundless determination to succeed as one of its historians. It’s fantastic yet unsurprising to see that those who teach history at UChicago are extremely diverse and erudite individuals, having achieved much over the course of their academic careers. It is with the utmost respect that I hope to someday be instructed by them, since they epitomize everything that I aspire to become. In being challenged by some of the best professors in the world, I will develop the skills that I need to accomplish my goals. That is why the University of Chicago appeals to me so greatly: your academics are demanding, your opportunities are prolific, and your community offers a home to those with a genuine love for learning. Here, I will not only be able to find new sources of knowledge; I will be able to find

Like any average person, I’ve accomplished many things in my life from learning how to walk to learning algebra in the eighth grade. However one of my greatest accomplishments has always been learning a new language. When I was eight years old, my family and I moved to the United States from Mexico. Naturally, I was very excited and eager to experience something new but because of the major differences, the move to a new country with a different language proved to be more difficult than I originally thought.

This course helped give me some realistic expectations and insight to French culture. Everyone knows stereotypes about different countries and their culture, but course debunked a lot of the stereotypes, and replaced them with more realistic portrayals of French culture. This course made my adjustment to France when I studied abroad much less intimidating.

This EF trip to Quebec is a once in a lifetime experience for anyone. However, as a French student hoping to go on this trip with peers who are also interested in French, it might mean more than it regularly would to a traveler. I hope to travel the world, and make a difference in it using language. I would like to go on this trip mainly to develop my French, and become more familiar with the French lifestyle. Last year, I took a vacation to France, and it was an incogitable experience. I found myself using more French, and understanding more of it as the trip continued. I would enjoy this kind of experience again, but in a new location with a different style of French and culture. Pertaining to this, I would someday like to study abroad,

Why should people nowadays see languages as a big prize? A person speaks more languages have more opportunities are skewed to him because he benefits the profit comparing to a person who speaks only one standard language. It is time for globalization and its effects on children for speaking other languages as a must. In two articles “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” by Richard Rodriguez and “Whose Voice Is It Anyway?” by Victor Villanueva, the two authors both expressed their opinions on native language and how the assimilation impacts a child. However, Rodriguez believed that the assimilation was beneficial for him as he had grown up in the English-speaking world and he disliked bilingual education which created many controversy.

Last summer, I went on an incredibly fun family vacation to Jordan. However, I have to admit that I definitely was not expecting to have that level of enjoyment during my trip. One of the biggest reasons why I felt this way about returning back to Jordan was because I spoke formal Arabic. Additionally, since all of my family in Jordan only spoke and understood informal Arabic as well as a Jordanian dialect that I was unfamiliar with, I knew that I was going to struggle to communicate with them. Moreover, given that Jordan is a country that primarily speaks an informal Jordanian dialect of Arabic as its first language, I felt as if I was going to be hopeless stranger. In fact, I never really understood the importance of speaking two languages growing up. I had always thought that learning English alone was sufficient enough. Quite simply, I did not realize the impact the Arabic language played in shaping my identity.