Hamad Hadeed

9/21/2014
Learning A New Language
Is A Literacy
After I graduated from high school in my country I realized that studying in
the United States is one of the best choices I would choose in my life. So I sought for
a scholar who can send me abroad of my country especially to the US. At that time
my English was almost nothing to give me the ability to continue studying at the
university. I knew I am going to need one more year in studying English before
joining the university so I applied for the English institute language training which is
known as ELTI in the UNCC. I arrived Charlotte to continue my dream that I am
excited to reach in some day in my future. I studied in the program and improved
my English from nothing to something that I could relay on. Some of my teachers
gave, helped and encouraged me a lot to not just learning English but going beyond
that, which is loving the language. Since then I believed that I am going to need a lot
of passion, patience and curiosity to gain literacy. And learning a new language is
also an enormous gain of literacy
For more than six months I learned a lot from my teacher. His name is Seth.
He was a very helpful teacher who believes in deep that teaching English is one of
the most important things that we need in 21st century. He taught me many things
but the most significant lesson that I learned from him was how to love the language
instead of thinking that language is a way to join the university. Since then I started
to change my way of thinking and considered English is an essential study in my life

even more than the academic studies that Im planning to study. From all things Ive
experienced here in charlotte, I started to feel that I have a passion in learning
English. So I read a lot of newspapers every morning I looked for the children books
in the bookstores because it was easy to read and have some easy way to get the
author meaning or message. Moreover, I felt that I was demanding more and more
to read a lot in English. So I started to read about topics that I like as genetic
engineering and how scientists in this field can improve the chances for parents to
have healthy fetus. Rather than that they also can choose the shapes that they want
their child to be. The significant change happened in my English studying period
when I was reading about the topics that I love to learn about more and more and
turning the study from learning to passion that wouldnt allows me to be lazy to
learn the language. I had so many issues that were able to make me quit studying
the language one of them was my mother illness. So I went back to my home country
to see my mother and make sure that she is doing well, but my passion and her
persistence made me coming back to continue my study.
Patience was the spine that I relied on in that period to get even a little of
knowledge about the English and how I could use what I have from the language and
work on joining the university. I tried a test that called IELTS that test the applicants
English and I got a high score on this test and I was able to join the university since I got
this score, but I spent one more semester in the institute to make sure that I was in the
right side. I maintained learning English especially in focusing in American history and I
found a lot of interesting, evolution, and creating a marvelous country. At the same time I
improved my English skills and my erudition by reading a lot of things in different fields

in English. Also trying to read every thing in English despite I love my language and I
knew that my native language is a rich language that has its beauty and an old history.
But I was patient enough to read only in English for more than a year. Believe it or not it
is hard to not read in your language for more than a year in purpose of improving another
languages skills specifically when love to read a lot in your language. So patience was
one of the significant requirements to have more literacy.
One of my characteristics that helped me to gain the basic literacy is my curiosity.
I tend to read, ask someone and even search in Google about any thing I hear about or
even think about. Despite all that I was feeling that I needed more and more to know
about, and I felt I demand new ways to develop my literacy in a short period of time. So I
learned new thing for me, which is reading a story that has a movie. For instance, I read
stories and watched their movies and I gain many things. I learned how directors switch
over the authors stories to make the story fit in movies framework. Also how they
disburse the characteristics among the actors and actresses that is requiring a lot of work
to do. My curiosity pushed me to know about the United States history so I watched
movies, read books, but the new thing I visited museums as (National museum of the
American Indian, Smithsonian American art museum and National museum of American
History). I saw some pieces that were used in the first immigration period when the
British ships came and it was a great experience for me.
All these tokens supported me a lot to know and gain more knowledge about both
English and American history. At the beginning of my arriving here I wasnt interested
about learning English or know more about the American history, but day after day I
discovered that Im living in great culture with a kind, helpful and easygoing society who

likes to help their guests and whoever needs a help. All and all, I think I can count
literacy for me in both languages that I knew because not knowing English doesnt mean
that I have no literacy. Also the idea of being a bilingual person is a kind of literacy since
learning a new language is much harder than learning how to write or gain more
information. For me each language has its separate world and adventure stuff to know
about. And learning the new language is improving the literacy levels for the person who
studies new languages. At the end, I hope that my literacy is going to be in advance
levels. I knew that I lack for a lot of things in English and my literacy needs to be
improved, but comparing to the time I had had to learn English and which level Im in in
these days I guess Im doing well.