learning english as a third language
It's interesting to read in the neighbor bearbloggers how much they love literature, perhaps from an early age.
In another life perhaps, I would have loved my high school English class. I would have devored each book and spent time dissecting its themes. In another life.. but not in this one.
The truth is that on some level, I have always enjoyed reading and writing, and now that I am older I have come to appreciate the written word even more.
beginning of my relationship with english
I think the problem really started when I was 12. At this time, I came to the US for this first time with barely any knowledge of English. My main exposure to English was through a class I took in 5th grade in France. Our teacher was a young British woman who insisted she got pregnant spontaneously. I was a little confused about her story then and still am now to this day. She was really nice and effective, so that by the end of the year we learned how to sing "Our House".
So with the English vocabulary of a 1970 song, I stepped off the plane into America. Going to middle school was a confusing experience. In fact, this was not my first time being dropped in a school with little knowledge of the local language. The same thing happened coming from Russia to France. I spoke no French and then no English. This second time around, I had a point of comparison! I was older, with the unbearable confidence of a middle schooler! Still, I could once again only barely piece together what people were saying. I carried a French-English dictionary around religiously for 3 years.
middle school
Amusingly, when I first came in to the middle school, in the middle of the year due to various reasons, I came in when they took a grammar test in English class. I couldn't understand any of the sentences but it was multiple choice with the standard tricky choices. I reasoned through the pattern and somehow got 80% with that alone. The teacher would say "look at this kid who came in, doesn't speak English even, and somehow scored better than many of you!" I'm not sure what lesson to take from that, but that was my first exposure to an American English class.
I spent time developing my English so I could converse over the next few years. Mostly I spent time watching TV, reading a lot of books, and doing practice grammar and punctuation problems. At school they assigned me some kind "English as a second language" aide. She would come in once or twice a week and would take me out of class to teach me English. In the first couple months, it was helpful to dive into vocabulary. She also gave us some repository of video cassettes of various American movies, which is how I started to watch more Disney films than ever before. Still, after year or so it was unclear why we kept going. We just sat and talked, but I was already talking in my classes! She made me take various evaluations and would critique books that I chose to read. My sister once did an impression of her: "This book is too hard for you to read. You should stop. ...Do you know what stop means?" In retrospect I am thankful for the early support she provided, although I wish it was more flexible later on.
In 8th grade I could mostly understand and speak English, although I was still learning a lot about American culture. I think it was that year that I attended my first Thanksgiving meal at a friend's house. Being autistic probably didn't help either. That year, I received one of those chain mail letters and forwarded it to the entire school for good luck. That crashed their email server!
It was in that context that I took the first English class where we discussed literary criticism. At that point, I could read the books we were given fine, but in retrospect I could not process themes at all, especially those that relied on an understanding of structures in society. I struggled to write. I had just mastered English grammar a year ago and chaining words into sentences was as slow as routing beads onto a necklace one at a time. How could I write a paragraph like this? I handed in an essay months late and with terrible writing. I didn't get a good grade in the end.
high school
High school was barely better. Reading took forever. It was miles better than where I had been in middle school: getting a headache as I reasoned through the English word by word while reading short books on the school bus home. Still, I couldn't make heads or tails of The Scarlet Letter in terms of the words, the culture, and the moral values. I still don't get the appeal of the book, but maybe I'm too much of a slut. As we advanced through the curriculum, it felt like the books become more and more tied to some otherworldly cultural practices like garden parties, gossip, and game nights. I was too much of a recluse to understand. There are layers to speaking a language beyond the words themselves.
We started to have in class essays. This made me realize how slow of a writer I am compared to everyone else. How do people string coherent thoughts into a 5 paragraph essay in a hour or two? It would take me the whole night each time when doing it for homework! I realized that I struggled more than most. I wrote and wrote and rewrote, until the words made no sense anymore. Did the words ever make sense or was I just fooling myself? I still don't know.
I'm not sure what happened exactly but I broke through my final year. Something clicked and I could write somewhat compelling literary analyses. Perhaps it was the fact that I had done all the reading and more so the words resonated in my mind. I did start reading articles online around this time. Maybe I had just written enough of these essays that the pattern finally clicked. Or perhaps it was the explicit instruction I got in Latin class about all the different rhetorical devices. I'm not sure, but here I am now.
today
I continued writing through college and grad school. Somehow, I can now write these essays here on this very website. For fun!!
In high school I was very into science, statistics, and computers. I was so frustrated with assigned essays that I dreamed of a future in which essays are obsolete because advanced computers will write them for us. Here we are now, the technology is here, but it is ultimately unsatisfying.
The machine cannot develop your thoughts for you, it cannot summarize your experiences. At best it can help you refine the words and thoughts you have already developed.
So I write this essay by myself. I have come so far. I never thought I could write so much in so little time.