Mohammad Hasan

English 11000 – B

Freshman Composition

October 10, 2022

It was always a great dream of mine to live in America since I heard that there are a lot of opportunities. However, I wasn’t prepared for hard times. I was born in Bangladesh and lived there for thirteen years so I know how to speak Bangla perfectly however I didn’t know how to speak English. It was so difficult for me to adjust to a different country. When I first came here I didn’t know how to speak English so it took a long time for me to understand everything. It’s been more than four years and I’m trying my best to have a bright future. 

I remember when I first came here I went to school. I had a lot of Bengali friends, however, some of them didn’t want to speak Bengali. I used to stay alone and I didn’t talk to anyone because I didn’t know how to communicate in English very well. Sometimes I used to feel bad and felt sad after coming home from school. I used to stay quiet and sad because of loneliness. I was feeling bad every day after coming home and asking myself why I come here because this feeling is really bad when you can’t communicate with anyone in school. Every day my classmates participate in class work but I couldn’t because I don’t know how to say but, I do understand the math questions but I just couldn’t explain it to my teacher so I wasn’t getting my class participation. After coming from school when I start doing my homework and I don’t understand anything I couldn’t get help from anyone because no one lives here and most of my family studied in Bangladesh so they don’t know how to do the homework. I didn’t have any relatives here; all of my relatives, except for my close family, were in Bangladesh so I didn’t get anyone support to do my homework or explain to me the questions I have about my school work.

For me, every day was another day to fight with learning English and trying to get this language because I couldn’t talk to anyone and that was making me feel even worse. I got an ESL class to understand this language they were treating me differently they were laughing at me after here my English the way I was speaking. I can’t forget how hard was on the first day of ESL class. I was sitting with 15 Spanish students they all were talking to each other in Spanish and I was alone I couldn’t ever understand anything because they were talking in Spanish and the teacher was a Spanish teacher too so none of them had a hard time understanding the teacher because when they didn’t understand anything the teacher was explaining to them in Spanish which helps them to understand what is the teacher was talking about. But for me, there wasn’t any teacher to explain to me whatever the teacher was saying at that time I have to try my best to understand the work and whatever were talking about or studying. After staying in an ESL class for weeks I have a few friends who were speaking the same language as me so they were explaining to me if I didn’t understand anything which help me a lot to improve my English. After staying in ESL for a few months I started understating whatever my teachers were teaching about and day by day I was getting my English better. I wasn’t feeling bad like how I used to feel when I was sitting in my class because there were people who could explain to me whenever I don’t understand anything or get any problem which help me to feel better and safe and that make me focus to understand English better. But taking help from other people wasn’t a good idea because that will make me not try to understand English. 

After staying in ESL for four months I was depending on other people to understand my teacher’s questions which created problems because then I wasn’t trying my best to understand whatever my teacher was teaching about. One day my teacher called me after class then she explain to me what happens when I take help from my friends to translate for me when I don’t understand anything. Then she explain to me that if I don’t take help from them and try my own and try to understand things that will make my English better and that way I could understand English more and it will make me try more. Also, She told me to try my best and participate in class and do mistakes still I will get points because that shows I was trying not just sitting in class. After trying my best I move to 7th grade and I was Understanding English very well and I could write English quite well too. But still, I was getting stuck in big words and higher definition words which make me nervous to write because when I get nervous I couldn’t write, but slowly I was getting everything done nicely and started doing well in my class like other students. After staying in ESL I can tell myself how much It helps students understand English because ESL makes any student understand English easily but if ESL students get treated better it will motivation to learn English more. 

After so many years I’m still learning how to understand English more and getting better. All of those struggles make me feel how much hard was English for me to understand as an immigrant person. I can feel how much hard was ESL class and how ESL class help me to get better at my English. Now I can’t speak English clearly and write English quite well. Every time I think about those days it motivates me to learn more about English and makes me improve my English more so that way I can be in a better place.