Personal Experiences

Assignment: “Personal Experience Essay”

During my early years in the United States, my main source of language development came from watching television and whatever nuances I was able to pick up from fellow students in school. Needless to say, my English was not something one would label proper. I only came to realize, how much I was lacking in my language skills as the years went by and Istarted interacting with different people in different atmospheres. Though I have been residing in the States for over 13 years now, I still find that my knowledge of the English language is far from sufficient.

A perfect example of the aforementioned is when I was taking English as Second Language classes in school in Vermont. Amy Tan talks about how some of the answers on her English test were always a judgment call. “The correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combination of thoughts”, Mrs. Tan writes. I couldn’t agree more with the above statement. For me personally, these tests came to be extremely confusing. Simple analogies, that may come easy to a native speaker,were and still are extremely difficult for me to grasp. I think this is due mostly to the differences in the language use for people who come from different cultures.

As my English skills excelled, I noticed that many people around me, including myself use “filler words”, which are pointed out in Hien Ngyuen’s “Memories”. The author writes: “my mother loved to talk, and her limited English forced her to repeat elementary sentences on a regular basis. She did however, master filler words.” In regards to these “filler words” I find that not only are the immigrants mastering them, but also the native speakers. Many people tend to use certain words to fill sentences due to a lack of vocabulary. Phrases such as “like” and “you know” are so widely used, that we as immigrants, tend to get an impression that they are apart of a proper English to be used on a daily basis. For me personally, the...