How Did My First Language Change

As one of the first member of my family who goes to college, things have changed over time. My story begins at a young age but, since then I see how things can changed in a small amount of time. I was 11-year-old when I moved from El Salvador to the United States. And it was the first time I saw, that things were going to changed. I came to the United States without knowing how different my life was going to be and all the changes that were about to happen. When I came to the United States I did not know any word in English. My first language is Spanish, but I was coming to a country where English is the first language people speak. And I knew this, when I stepped into the airport in Dallas, Texas. I was with my brother and my grandfather and none of us spoke English. We were lost, we didn’t know how to communicate with others. But in the hallways, I heard someone speaking Spanish and I took this chance to asked for help. …show more content…
And we did get the help we needed. When we arrived at our destination Charlotte, North Carolina I saw how things looked different. A few days later, is when I was going to face a big challenge. I was going to start school, I was going to be in 7th grade, and I was going to learn how to speak English. I was really excited because, I was going to meet different people, and learn how to speak English. But that excitement didn’t last like I planned. The first day of school was the scariest out of all the other days. One of the ESL teacher brought me to my first class, and she introduced me to one of her male student who speak Spanish too. I was glad someone was going to help. Oh, God if only I knew how wrong I was. This guy told me a lot of things about him and introduced me to other people who knew Spanish. As the days were passing I started feeling alone. I wasn’t friends with anyone, I didn’t have anyone helping me. I started getting bullied because I did not know how to speak English. My first bully was an African American girl but, what made it sadder was the other people who were Hispanics and spoke Spanish were being bullies too. I couldn’t handle it, and I wanted to leave. I had no one to help me, how was I supposed to pass my classes. That’s when the guy I met the first day of school showed up. I remember we were in the first class of the day, he sat beside me in the same table. And he started touching me, I was scared, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell an adult about it because I didn’t know English. He told me he was going to help me. But I had to let him touch me whenever he wants to. I had no idea what to do. I had no one, but at the end I let him. I needed help, the ESL teachers had other students to help and they were not able to stayed with me during all my classes. But it stopped, the guy was a rebel. He didn’t care about school, he was one of those guys who skipped school, goes to parties every weekend, etc. He ended up getting suspended for the rest of the year. As the school year was ending my English improved from zero to maybe thirty percent. But I still needed it help. It was until 8th grade when I met a nice girl named Jacqueline who was the first one to helped me. I changed for the better thanks to her. During this year, I was still shy but I started speaking a little bit of English. It was all thanks to the nice girl I met. She told me “don’t be shy and scared to speak English, just because you think someone is going to make fun of you. Speak and don’t worry that’s how you’ll learn.” It was just those words, the ones I needed. And those words changed me. I started to speak English and I keep learning new words every day. My English was getting better. But I still didn’t know how to read or write. During 9th grade I met another girl name