Cover Letter
My audience are people who can speak more than one language, in other words Bilingual or Multilingual. My theme focuses on personal things I had experienced in life.
Literacy Narrative
“Students welcome to the first day of high school classes, I would like everyone to introduce themselves” this was asked by my teacher on the very first day of classes, my first “American High-School” experience was full of emotions, and sentiment, because who gets mocked at their accent? I did, for all the folks that were sitting in that class, I guess my accent was their problem, and it was. Growing up in Bangladesh, and then immigrating to the U.S. I was privileged that I went to an English-Medium school (ESL), and at least learned the basics, though I was not able to catch the accent.
English is the most spoken language in the world, I was seven years old when I first learned it in Bangladesh, and my parents forced me to get enrolled in an ESL school, Eventually, they knew that someday they will move to the U.S.A and would be a good head start for me to get along, and that was true I have seen a lot of people in the U.S not being able to speak basic English, but I was privileged. I spent up to 8th grade in that ESL school in Bangladesh.
Eventually, my family moved to the United States Of America when I was fourteen years old, it was mid-August when my journey to get enrolled in a High School started. Since I was an immigrant international student, who didn’t go to any school in America, I had to give an English Proficiency Test. When I first heard it I was like “what is proficiency means” by that quote of mine you can surely understand how bad my grammar is. After a couple of days, it was my test, the way the test was structured was a short writing section, a math section, and a reading with multiple choice questions, I nailed the math section because it was simple math and easy, but I failed the writing part, that’s when I realized the basic English that I learned was not appealing to the actual thing that needs to be learned, due to it was poor English, not even close to the standard. My mother tongue is Bengali, and shifting it to proper English was tough for me. The school did put me in their student slot, but I had to pass that proficiency test somewhere in the future.
After attending numerous after-school sessions for English classes, learning outside of the academic circle to learning in a creative way such as watching English movies with subtitles, and listening to different English songs, I Eventually, led to pass my test, after some realization, I begin to think how this whole story made a marvel fan and an Ed Sheeran fan.
I enjoy reading over writing or speaking, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to, I do know, but the fear that works on me while someone tells me to speak or write is just unexplainable. Coming from a country where English is the 2nd language, and transitioning to a 1st language English country was hard, because projecting my voice to people, and subconsciously thinking what if they mock my accent or the way I speak killed me every time.
Gradually passing with good grades in high school, there was a time when they put every student into AP courses, which was a very hard English course, which everyone hated, so did I, Because it took a lot of time/reading to complete every day around 15-20 pages of reading was frustrating, can’t even drop from that class because it was mandatory. Slowly slowly, after getting used to it I tend to realize my English was improving with all the different vocabulary I am encountering in everyday reading was helping me shape my reading or speaking ability, from Jane Eyre, the Great Gatsby, Kite runner, Shakespeare, to Macbeth I read all those famous books from top seller writers. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t encounter AP literature in junior year. Now I can tell I enjoy reading and speaking, but the writing part for me needs improvement. Who knows which subject in life will help it?
Throughout my experience with learning English, I found out that reading can open much more of a gateway of imagination than anything else, with overtime encountering different unique vocabularies, and expressing it in my daily life excluded me from the crowd, and I emerged myself in a very different view for other people.
