Karime Aguilar
My Experiences with Reading and Writing
All people had problems with reading and writing, some people had more than others, but
most of them overcome them. All my life I had problems with reading and writing. In my
childhood I did not like to read and I made many mistakes writing in my native language. In high
school it all changed and I started to do it well. I had a class where my teacher taught me how to
read faster and better, but then I started thinking about studying in El Paso, Texas, and
everything changed, again year and a half year ago, I started to learn my second language and
my reading and writing become like a child is again. I will tell the story about how my reading
and writing has been changing in my life.
The first problem that I had when I began studying in El Paso was that I did not
understand almost anything. I thought all the time that the best thing was quitting my studies at
El Paso and coming back to Juarez because it was going to be easy and my grades would be
better than the grades if I continued studying at El Paso. It was too hard for me to understand the
difference between the verb tenses. My teachers at the ESL intensive program taught me many
usual words and my vocabulary grew more in just few weeks. I started reading the little stories
from the books and searching for the words that I did not understand in a dictionary or translate.
It was better for me using translate because it was more familiar if the word was in Spanish than
if I read all the definition in English with more words that I did not understand. I started trying to
make complete sentences and using the words that I was learning to memorize them. Once my
teacher taught us many words, she told us how to make a paragraph, the paragraph needed to
have just five sentences. It was really easy because we just describe something about common
things just like, family, school, childhood, goals, and others. My teacher taught me how to write
Karime Aguilar
the introduction which need to have a hook, general statement, specific topic, thesis statement,
and the outline. It was really hard for me to think in a hook. Anytime I tried to make a hook I
made boring sentences. Then, my teacher told me that the hook could be a question and it change
everything. The hook become the easiest part of the introduction.
The second thing that happened was that we started to write essays with 100-200 words
and we read articles or stories of one or two pages. My teacher taught me to make the body and
the conclusion of an essay. The body needed to have three important ideas which it was easy to
have them. The difficulty of making the body was that I needed to talk a lot of the important
ideas. Sometimes I thought that my brain was going to explode. I really needed to think about
describe the idea and the words in English, but many times I did not have words for it. Also, I
used to translate everything from Spanish to English, so my sentences were poorly structured. In
reading, it was really hard because I pronounced the words badly even if I was reading in my
mind. I started listening more programs in English and I started to understand more how the
words are pronounced. I spent all the time reading and at the same time translating everything in
my mind, I was really frustrated because sometimes I really get confused or at the end of the
reading I do not understand what I read. When I really did not understand how a word was
pronounced I usually used Google Translate to hear the word in English. I tried to read all the
time I could read, and searching many different kinds of words in Google to increase my
vocabulary and to practice my understanding. It was not easy because all the time I translated a
word, I continued reading and again the word appeared and I did not remember the meaning.
Then, I started to write essays with 500-600 words and again it was difficult because the
stories that I needed to read were more than five pages. I remember that I needed to write about
Karime Aguilar
topics that I did not know anything about them. It was really hard for me because I needed to
research the topic, making it with my own words and not plagiarize, and also I needed to learn
more words that sometimes I did not understand even in Spanish. It was still very, because
sometimes I forget the word even though I used it five minutes ago. In reading, I taught I was
becoming better and better but when I was on vacation I did not practice. The last semester I read
a book in English and now I am proud of it. I think that my reading just need more practice
because if I practice I would understand more and more day-by-day. Just one last thing is that
now some times that I am writing in Spanish I forget how to write some words with good
spelling. In the future I will continue reading and writing, because I know that I will needed for
my education and to earn culture. Another thing that I will do, is that I will read in Spanish
because I do not want to lose the knowledge that I learned all my life. I will never give up in my
reading and writing to improve myself. In the future, I want to write good essays or reports about
my work in any job that I have and I will have the skills to read understanding the reading, and
reading it faster and with a good pronunciation.
In conclusion, my experiences in reading and writing have undergoing many changes
since I started to learn English. I have been learning a lot of vocabulary, and my teacher in the
ESL program taught me how to write a paragraph and then an introduction with anything it needs
to be complete. Then, she taught me to write a complete essay with introduction, body, and
conclusion. I started reading sentences, but now I can read articles, stories or books. I will not
lose my native language, so I will continue practice in Spanish and English. In the future, I will
write and read about harder topics, but I will do well because of my practice and my knowledge
will be better day-by-day.