Personal Narrative: My Mistreatment Of My Family

Moving to America, was a difficult transition for me. I had come to the realization that I wasn’t going to see my friends any time soon back in Iran and that was hard to overcome at a young age. I was alone as a child because my siblings are a lot older than me, and my parents’ had the challenge of starting over because they had left everything behind in Iran. However, that wasn’t going to get in the way of me succeeding in school. I have always been a fast learner, by the age of eight I had already learned four languages. Also, I was voted most improved by my classmate every year I was in Elementary School. This might not seem like a big achievement, but as a young student in a new country it was a huge motivation boost for me to improve every

Coming from a new country I had to face many challenges. All these challenges made who I am today. When I came to the United States in 7th grade, I barely knew how to speak English. The language barrier posed a serious problem for me. I found it difficult to interact with people. Adjusting to a new country was no easy task. When my family and I came to this country, we knew only one other family. It was even more difficult for my parents who knew virtually no English. They had to learn how to work and provide for me and my siblings in this entirely new country with a completely different culture. Despite having a better background in English, it still took me over two years to become fluent in English. Although coming to America and having

Moving from Jordan to the United States was challenging for my family. I was the only child at the time and my parents primarily spoke Arabic in the house. The elementary teachers I had described me as a timid student, because I could barely speak English. I had difficulty with simple reading and writing, while other students went through class with ease. Needing extra tutoring classes and years of being in ESL was exhausting. However, learning how to read, write, and speak English fluently was only the beginning of my journey.

The time came for her to be delivered. She gave birth to her first born son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. These were the words that I had spoken during a church Christmas play while I was just about to see the light at the end of my elementary school career. As I looked out into the faces of my family, I realized that I was making someone proud. I too was proud to have such a caring family whom I thought would be my strength throughout my life. Life has been so good to me thus far with wonderful parents, an older sister to whom I worshiped, and an older brother to keep me in tune with the magnificent

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.

The first and second year after moving from China to the United States, I was afraid to talk to strangers because my English was not quite well. I had to depend on my husband to deal with my personal business, such as making a doctor’s appointment, calling to the bank, or questioning the DMV officers. Douglass says, “being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart” (62). Being a dependent and helpless adult is a shame for me. In addition, I did not have extra money to go to school to improve my English skills. Thus, I stayed home all the time to avoid the embarrassment that happened when I did not understand strangers’ conversation. Meanwhile, being silent at home leaded worries to my future. I realized that I had to improve my oral English to gain self-confidence. I spent time reading various articles on the internet, and I watched English dialogues’ videos on YouTube. As a non-English speaking immigrant living in the U.S., I challenged myself to overcome difficulties to integrate myself into a new

After arriving in the United States, things weren’t as wonderful as we had planned for. Coming to such a unique place in the world was a blessing, but it brought many obstacles to me and my family. It was truly one of the greatest obstacles I had to face learning a new language and getting used to the American life. Getting placed into the ELL program made me feel like I had to work harder than everyone else just to get simple things done. I was made fun of due to the lack of my abilities in speaking English. This only pushed me to work harder and become the best that I can be in everything I do. One thing that stayed the same was the level of support my family members here in the U.S. were able to provide me with to help me get through the

My dad was an orphan, and is yet to relocate his family. He immigrated to America in 2000, with nothing but the clothes on his back and immediate family. His purpose was to resettle, raise a family, and see his kids pursue an education to be the best of themselves.Working in ignominious jobs in factories to provide. Life as a whole was a problem. Places like grocery stores, public airports, and the fast economy of America were complications. Indoor plumbing, electricity, television, showers were all a brand new concept to comprehend. Learning English was the biggest challenge my family overcame. In my household growing up, my father emphasized education. He always said to me in our native language Dinka, “Lino, you get out of life, what you put into it”. Those words evoke nostalgic memories of my youth. Up until 3rd grade I was in ESL because I was struggling learning English. How did I get out? My dad would point and ask me to read or spell out objects to practice and become fluent. After one I excelled drastically passed the ESL exam and moved out of ESL. This was meaningful to me, many of the influences in my life can’t be able to say they hold a diploma, but they’ve showed me if you work for it you can achieve anything. Currently I'm the second in my family who will be going to college to get a degree, and it's the second greatest achievement to my father. I plan on improving the lives of my family, and my

On September 1, 2012 I moved to Virginia, United States. Many can say that, but to me it is one of the greatest things I have done in life. Being born in Puerto Rico, an island in which Spanish is the main language, the wish of learning English was constantly in my mind. As I grew up I started to take English courses in school; however, the courses were not as effective, since I only learned the basics of English. Later on after graduating from sixth grade I was enrolled in a bilingual private school. The fact that the school was mostly in English and that it was private challenged my learning even more than in a public school. Although the school was a great one, I was doing badly accademically. It wasn’t until the school year was over that I decided to move to the state of Virginia in order to begin with my journey. A journey in which I learned many things from life and because of this experience I am preapared to overcome anything that comes between me and what I want.

I am a Chinese immigrant, and I have been New York six years already. In here, I spend lots of time to learn English and adapt the cultures. Even my language is not as good as a native speaker, but I still want to be an American here. Therefore, I am planning to become a US citizen within two years, before I graduate college. In this six years, I started from learning alphabetical in high school. Because of my language problem, I didn’t have a good GPA in high school. It made me upset. After I graduate high school, I didn’t go to college, because I thought, even I went to college at that time, I won’t have good score and achievement. I won’t spend too much time and concentrated on study. Therefore, in the year after I graduated, I went to

United States has always been described as the land of opportunity and freedom. Most people who visit America are more likely to stay due to its beauty and the opportunities that are available to succeed, so I was confident than I would be spending most of my life here. By the time I got the U.S, school was about to start. I finished 7th grade before I came to the United States, so I was supposed to be in 8th grade once school starts; however, the principle of the middle school that I was going to attend stated that I was too young to advance to 8th grade; therefore, I have to repeat 7th grade. When I started school, I had to face many challenges since I did not speak English. During the first year of school, I have struggled a lot thought out my classes especially in my English class. Since I did not understand English, I did not understand what my teachers were saying so it was impossible for me to complete the assigned tasks and perform well in class. This situation is basically similar to an American student taking advanced Spanish class for the first time and telling him/her to pass the class without knowing any Spanish at

Surprisingly, I was able to master English in a short time, and passed ESL with a nearly perfect score. I went from a B- student in China to an A+ student in America. People praised me for my effort and adaptability, but they don’t know that I’ve been preparing for this for so long. I wanted to please my mother and father so badly. So I thought that was the reason why I took interest in learning all kinds of languages, but, it wasn’t.

The language would be my downfall. This lack of faith that people had in me made me upset, but it gave me strength to me work harder for my classes. I always carried a dictionary with me and promised myself that if a normal American student is studying two hours I should study four hours to achieve success. My hard work and determination allowed me to be able to adapt to life in America, and learn the language very quickly. In my freshman year of high school, I received many awards . I was an honor student, I received the superintendent student’s recognition award and had my name in the newspaper. I joined student leaders and ambassadors and was elected treasurer of the club. These accomplishment surprised many people around me. I had become very successful

Having lived comfortably in my hometown Vietnam for 18 years, I had to start everything from the beginning when I came here a few years ago. As an immigrant, I realized linguistic difference was one of the most significant educational barriers that I faced. Although I had studied English before, I still could not speak English fluently. Essentially, in Vietnam the teachers lectured mostly on grammar, and people there did not speak English frequently. Therefore, I barely had a chance to practice my English communication. There were the times when I could not answer any basic questions of native speakers. I felt horrible about myself at that time, but later I told myself not to live in this situation anymore. A few weeks after coming here, I registered to study ESL at an adult school near downtown Sacramento. There were many students coming from different countries whose English was not their first language, so

the day and English at night, but my transition was harder due to my poor foundations of the English language. I now had to speak, write, and read in English, when I preferred my native language, Spanish. Immaculate Heart Elementary School provided a tutor to help me read from the textbooks in my third grade class. I had difficulty communicating with the teacher and classmates. I felt embarrassed for not understanding English, and sad knowing that it was hard to speak with my Spanish accent. Even though I was placed in such an unfamiliar and difficult situation, I enjoyed the educational atmosphere. I felt safer in an environment where I had some individual attention. I began to write essays about various social studies related topics such as the 41st President of the United States and the Statue of Liberty. I recall spending a lot of my time thinking about the ideas I should mention in those essays, but I spent even more time trying to get those thoughts on lined paper. I wondered whether I was saying things the correct way. I felt behind compared to the other student in my class. I didn?t know the basics of grammar, like when to use ?is? and not ?are?, when everyone else had mastered that area of study. I struggled thinking in Spanish and