Learning English by Franklin

Learning English by Franklin - March 2014 Scholarship Essay

I never knew how it felt to be deaf until I left Cameroon three years ago. I arrived in Washington, D.C. and did not understand or speak English. I could hear noise and people talking around me, but I could not comprehend the meaning. It was very difficult to be around people who were learning, laughing and joking while I was on my own. This was the first time in my life I felt excluded.I was stuck in the middle of the road and did not knew which way to go. English was the mountain I had to climb. The vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, stress, they all made up the baggage I had to lift while I was climbing the mountain of English.

Four year ago, I was in Cameroon and English never liked me. I say this because in Cameroon, we had English class only two times a week. During these two classes, I did not pay attention since I thought it was pointless and usefulness. However in 2011 my father informed me that I was going to United States to live with my uncle and continue my education. Here in the States, the culture was easy to get adapted; the toughest part in school was that the language and because students spoke was English. When I first arrived, I regretted the lessons I had missed in Cameroon, but it was already too late. When I arrived here, I felt like a dog watching TV because I couldn't understand anything. That is how English became the subject in which I had the most difficulties in. Because I did not have any starting point, I was stuck in the middle of the road not knowing which way to go.

When I started school, English quickly became my toughest barrier to adapting to the environment and succeeding in academics. The difficult part was that every time that I opened my mouth to try to express myself to a classmate, they just laughed at me because my English was terrible. Also because most of my time I was with Spanish speaker who did not know English like me made it more difficult for me to learn English. This was very frustrating and not really motivating for me. What made it even more difficult was that everything was new to me: the language, teachers, school, country and the system.

The Irony is that the same reasons that put me down at the beginning helped me bounce back up. The simple fact that people were making fun of me because of my accent made me want to try even harder. It gave me the strength to double my effort in English (writing, reading and speaking). The fact is that because I never gave up, I improved my English at a very quick pace. I can say now, less than four years after leaving Cameroon, that I am already fluent in English. I understand almost everything and have taken AP English classes and college classes at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) for college credit.
Now that I am a senior, I am helping some of my friends that need help on understand English. Every time they don't understand any time, I try my best by to explain certain concepts to them. Sometime, I tutor my classmates on Saturday on the stuff they did not understand in class or on the paper that we have to write. I even tutor English to two of my friends who came in United States a year after I did. Now they are almost at the same level as me. Together we are on the top of the mountain we were climbing. Now we are even try to climb another mountain which will be college. In my opinion, the students who don't speak English are because they are scare of being laugh at like they did do me. So, they don't even try to speak. Language is a tool to bring people together, we learn from one another's differences.