EDISON, NJ "Student Talks about Learning English" 01/09/2009
By Xu Li
When I was eleven years old, I faced a whole new world – my family immigrated to the United States. Everything was different from China, especially the language. No one spoke Chinese at my new school in Edison, New Jersey. Although I had a translator who was Chinese, we couldn’t understand each other because he spoke Cantonese and I spoke Mandarin, the official language of China.
I had learned many formal English phrases in China, but I quickly learned they were not useful in the United States.
When I met my classmates, none of them said, “How do you do?” so that I couldn’t say, “How do you do!” Instead, my classmates said, “Hi” “Yo” and “What’s up?”
My tongue was so tight that I couldn’t say a word, and I forgot all the sentences I had learned. I couldn’t understand a single word as my classmates welcomed me. I tried to smile and show my friendliness, but the smile froze on my face. I could hardly move my head, and my feet stuck to the floor.
What’s worse was that I couldn’t even understand a single sentence during my teacher’s lesson, even though I had listened to many ESL tapes right after I came here. Why couldn’t I understand? I felt that I was both deaf and mute. I didn’t know how I could begin to understand English. For the rest of the class, I didn’t hear anything my teacher said.
What’s worst was that I could only blindly answer “yes” or “no” to every single question from my classmates during recess. Some of them laughed so hard at my answers that they could barely stand upright. I wished that I had a magic translator in my brain, and also I wished for a hole that I could hide in. I was saved by the bell, but when back in the classroom, I just stared at the board without seeing or hearing.
Then, I remembered what my dad told me that he used to call 1-800 to listen to the menus again and again to train his listening during his first half-year in the US. So I tried to listen to the lesson, and copied as many words on the board as possible and took the notes home to study.
I borrowed easy books and cassettes, and short biographies of American Presidents from libraries. With my mom’s help, I worked four hours a day and soon I could read a bit by myself and could understand a little of my teacher.
One day I understood a complete sentence during recess – “What’s up?” That night, I told my mom excitedly, but I was confused because nobody looked up.
Mom said, “Maybe it’s like WATCH OUT. Maybe it’s a rhetoric which implies watch out.”
The big day finally came. I suddenly understood several students during recess — “We can play pushing game again with Mr.Yes-or-No.” the pushing game was a trick they played on me – they had called it a game, but it was just an excuse to push me around. I would not play that again.
At the end of the school year, I could understand and participate in class and made some friends.
Summer was coming fast and I made a big decision to complete summer readings. My first target was Hatchet. I flipped open the book, and I was stunned. Holding my breath, I counted fifty vocabulary words in two pages. Disappointed and frustrated, I put down the book and turned on the TV. However, I couldn’t watch the TV. I almost cried. Holding tears in my eyes, I told myself crying isn’t a boy’s behavior.
I counted one, two three, and then I wrote a daily plan: make vocabulary list, memorize 50 words, read 2 pages. I started to make the vocabulary list, and I found a big secret buried in the lines within several minutes — I found that PILOT repeated six times, HEADSET repeated four times, RADIO repeated three times, DASHBOARD repeated two times, and … more. There were only about 30 new words in the two pages! With my mom’s help, summer reading started.
I was so excited — I understood a sentence that was seven lines long on the bottom of page two! I couldn’t wait for the second day to read, so I read 4 pages on the first day. We usually worked fourteen hours a day. For every sentence we had to piece together each individual word. Sometimes the finished puzzle didn’t make sense because many words had multiple meanings, and we lacked grammar skills.
Finally, after three weeks, we finished the first book. By the end of the summer, I was so proud because I had finished four summer reading books. The school only required one, even for the regular students.
When sixth grade started, I was still placed in ESL level 1 because I had been in the U.S only half a year. However, a week later, my schedule changed — I moved up to level 2 ESL. After two weeks, my schedule changed again — I moved up to regular science class.
By the end of my sixth grade, I successfully passed the ESL exam and skipped the three remaining ESL levels. All of my teachers congratulated me.
During that summer before we moved to another apartment. I found an old sheet hanging on the wall with many different phrases, like “Where is the restroom?” “Where is the library?” “I’d like …” “Would you please tell me …” “May I beg your pardon?” I remembered that I used to read them every morning before school. But right now, I was a regular student.
In seventh grade, I took all the regular courses. I am currently taking AP Literature, and I enjoy the study of English.
No matter how difficult the situation is, a positive attitude will always help. Along with hard work, everything is possible.
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