Language Investigation #3

I came to the United States in 1989 and could not speak one single word of English. I was nearly 10, in third grade, and could not understand, read, or write anything. It was frustrating, to say the least. But, only 2 years later I was reading classics. Classics, you ask? Yes! Let me explain.


When I arrived in the United States in the late 80’s, I was quickly put into an English as a Second Language class for one hour a day, 5 days a week. I would leave my regular, scheduled classroom with my English speaking friends and would go into a room with 3 or 4 other kids who were just like me- on their way to being bilingual. For a long time we worked with Sesame Street books. They were easy to read, fun, and where made just for kids like us to understand. A picture coincided with a word and that was how I learned to read. But, by 5th grade, my teacher, Mrs. Jeanetta, became ambitious. I can’t exactly remember the names of the stories we were reading but they were difficult to read and difficult to understand. What I do know is that they were classics. Mrs. Jeanetta made a point to let us know that we were indeed reading difficult literature. This, she would point out, would not be literature that our friends would be reading. These classics would only be read by them in Junior High. So, one would ask, why were we reading them if our English was not even close to par with the “average” students’?


Mrs. Jeanetta was a bright woman that knew that reading such difficult works of literature would do several things for us. First, it would raise our self-esteem. As silly as that may seem, that was just as important as being able to understand the words in the text. By building our self-esteem, she was giving us the confidence we needed to join in the conversation in our regular classroom. Secondly, the difficult words allowed us to learn to become self-educators. This lesson was: if you do not know the vocabulary, you have the power to look it up. She taught us that we did not need her or anyone else to become independent in our learning. If Mrs. Jeanetta had been giving us remedial words that were already familiar to us, we might have been complacent with our language development.


Mrs. Jeanetta’s methods greatly affect who I am today, as a reader an a writer. I still feel that my vocabulary is remedial. This is not to say that I find that my education has lacked in substance. It has not. But, it has taught me to keep a little book of words I hear and read. Next to the words, I write their definition. This, by no means mean that I will remember them. But, I go back to these words often, reminding myself that language is powerful and I can use these words to express the strength at which I was my voice to be perceived.