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Allowed to watch TV channels in English and with subtitles ONLY!
When I was about four years old, my dad had this old box television with two to three channels. As soon as I entered preschool, it was a given that I had to learn to be fluent in English. English was commonly used in Pakistan since it was once colonized by Britain. I hated when my mother tried to teach me the alphabets, so she tried to get me familiar with the language and told my dad to buy a LED TV by which I started watching cartoons and learned how to format sentences and basic phrases. -
Differentiating Between b and ds
My mother made sure I didn't fall behind, even though I just wanted to watch the TV and go play outside. She forced me in a chair for a good one hour until I learnt how to differentiate between the letters b and d, I cried and she screamed and made me write it a hundred times until I memorized. I am thankful that thanks to her, my reading skills were better than any other preschooler. -
Determined to place first!
When I was in about third grade, I was determined to get my class rank up to 1st. In Pakistani schools, in a class of forty people the top five get to have badges and sashes. I worked really hard and was always praised by my English teacher. This girl next to me was struggling to write a creative paragraph and that's when I realized how lucky and thankful I was for my mother. I became the valedictorian of my class! I was really proud of myself since even my older sister couldn't place high. -
My Dad bought a Dictionary Book!
I wasn't that interested in the dictionary book that my dad bought but then we started playing this game of "Name, Place, Animal and Thing," I got really competitive and listed out all possible things and animals and searched up names on the computer to win. Besides the game, I found some interesting words which I wanted to learn to use in sentences and that is where I built most of my vocabulary. -
Never practiced my conversation skills in English!
I never read out loud, a few times in fourth to third grade but never really verbally practiced English or tried to fix my accent. When I got to my flight to America, I was feeling anxious questioning my English skills and at the time I really wanted headphones, I tried asking the flight attendant but I suddenly couldn't ask her. I don't know if I was anxious but the words just wouldn't come out of my mouth. I realized that I had never engaged in a conversation with a person in English before. -
Writing Poems!
In eighth grade, I loved reading and writing poems. I loved any assignment relating poems, my communication skills got better even though I still think I need more improvement even now it was definitely an improvement. I was interested in sentimental topics and I was truly mortified at that age to learn about the inhumane actions of some famous morally corrupted people. Since I was new to the U.S, I had no friends with my introverted personality so I wrote about this isolated experience. -
Me now!
I think I've read a decent amount of books by now and wrote enough essays to say I'm at an average level of reading and writing skills. Nowadays I love to read about plays, I love any book in which emotions are expressed well to the point where you can just imagine it happening in your head. I wish to improve even more, which is why I challenged myself by taking honors and AP English classes.