Learning English

When I first came to the US at 5 years old in June of 2011, I didn’t know any English besides the basic greetings such as “Hi” and “How’re you doing?”. For the first 2 to 3 months, it didn’t really matter since I was just with my family visiting places and adjusting to the “American” lifestyle. That was until I was enrolled in elementary school, where I had to learn everything from scratch. At first, I was really worried about being behind in school since in Bangladesh the school year is from January to December, and unlike the US, there isn’t a summer break. So, I wasn’t enthusiastic about being the new kid in class who had no clue what was happening.

The first day of school arrived quicker than I had hoped. I was really nervous and wanted to stay with my mom because everything was so foreign, and I didn’t understand what anyone was saying. As I walked into the classroom, everyone got quiet and was anticipating me to introduce myself, but I just stood there in silence until the teacher took the lead to introduce me. I was given a round of applause and walked to my new seat, where I looked around to see many new faces looking my way. Thankfully, there were some classmates who spoke my native language, Bengali. This was the best situation that could’ve happened for me, since they were basically my tour guides. They were the ones who helped me get adjusted by showing me around, telling me about certain rules, and translating what the teacher was saying. Their guidance really helped me get through the first week of school before there was any actual work assigned. I was given a confidence boost by their willingness to help me learn, which let me stop being shy, engage in conversations, and make an active effort to learn something from each day of class. Although I was full of motivation now, I ran into a roadblock of being behind in certain subjects.

For some reason, I thought the teacher would give me a pass since I was new, only to realize that all the other kids had also just started first grade along with me. I had only just started to realize that here in the US, the school calendar wasn’t the same as in Bangladesh, unlike what I had previously thought. Even though I was behind in general knowledge of the subjects, my classmates weren’t miles ahead as I had previously thought. With that being said, I was still behind and was only able to really grasp math since it involved the least English, so I proceeded to cheat off my classmates for the other subjects, which required reading and writing in English. All I had to do was ask for help, and they would eagerly show me their work as if it were a competition to see who I copied from. As I was getting a generous amount of help from my classmates in other areas, I was able to focus on learning and understanding English. It was the hardest subject to cheat on since I didn’t even know what I was writing or saying, which would definitely make the teacher suspicious of me, so cheating was off the table.

With loads of time to work on my English, I started to pick up on words and phrases I heard in class and tried to use them as best as I could. I wanted to impress my new friends by showing them what I had learned, simply to be told I was using it wrong. An example would be the word “tomorrow,” meaning the following day. My use of the word was “It was really hot tomorrow,” which is completely wrong, but in my defense, I was basing my reasoning off Bengali, where we use the same word for yesterday and tomorrow. Although I was disappointed at first, it helped me fix my grammar and keep trying. Even though my speech wasn’t fully there, I was soon starting to make out what others were saying by looking at their actions and facial expressions.

They gave me weird looks at first, like, “Why’s he just staring at us?” which didn’t bother me much since I had to do whatever I could to start understanding this new language. Slowly but surely, I got better at using words and phrases that I heard my classmates use to converse with them to the best of my abilities about random topics, such as who was taller than the other. I was one of the taller kids around that time, so I took some pride in being the second tallest in the class, even if I was only 5’-1”. As the second and third weeks of school rolled by, I felt that I was a genius, as my understanding of English was picking up pace every day. One after another, I was hearing new sounds and revelations flowing through my ears, leaving me astonished to believe that I really just learned a new language just like that. I still remember the day when I went home and just bragged to my mom about all that I had learned, constantly using English words to impress her.

This massive achievement can all be credited to the school environment, as it really helped me learn and understand English. I was able to rely on actual communication to build up my vocabulary and speech instead of relying on a textbook. This helped me mix in and understand my classmates better, as my English didn’t sound different from theirs. And with their help, it only took me about a month or so to pick up English to the point where I could speak to others and understand them without looking puzzled.