My Writing Experience

If you spent a month with me, you’d probably never catch me reading a book or writing on my free time. I had many difficulties staying focused when I would read, and understanding the purpose of most pieces I’d read. There’d be too many words that I didn’t know the meaning to, or even be able to pronounce, so I would simply close the book and go on with my day. I had difficulties building outlines, and being creative when I would write, it would take me a week to write a simple narrative of what I did during my summer break. Reading and writing would get me frustrated, so I would always give up on reading a book or writing an essay. I wouldn’t do so well in my English classes in middle school, so I never felt the need to improve in high school

It wasn’t until I turned 10 that I was being taught only English in school. It was always Spanish and English before, but for the most part Spanish. When I would get home, my parents would speak in Spanish, so I’d hear and speak it every day. At school I had much confusion between the two languages so my spelling and vocabulary was very poor. Then finally during my junior year, I was handed my very first F in my English 3 class. I didn’t understand why I was performing so poorly, I was usually decent in this subject. The low grades continued, and I couldn’t handle seeing all these failing grades that were being handed to me. I began to think back to when I was little, and how Spanish was my first language. A part of me felt that that was the reason for all my difficulties in English class, but then another part of me felt differently. It would be so easy to just blame all my difficulties on not learning English first, but I decided not to do that. I blamed

I would never seek out for help to improve my skills, never went to tutoring, and never asked for help from my teachers. Because of my laziness and indetermination to improve my English and writing skills, I had many difficulties in my English classes. I knew it was possible to improve even if my first language was not English. A new student from Mexico entered our school who spoke nothing but Spanish. He had lived in Mexico for 16 years before moving to the United States. I can recall feeling sorry for him because he had to learn a new language as fast as possible in order to get through the rest of high school, which I could only imagine would be extremely difficult. I thought he would end up dropping out, but to my surprise he stuck around. There was not one day that there was not a book in his hands, was not in the library afterschool, or attempting to speak English at school. That young man ended up excelling in English, with higher scores than almost everyone in class. I decided to follow his