The Influence and Contributions of my School and Mentors in my English Writing

We are used to write in a very academic way, I believe is because we have learned that in school we require certain rules, structures, and appropriate language in order to express our ideas and opinions with the reader. In my previous years in school I still remember the time when I could not even write a sentence when my English teacher would pronounce word by word. I close my eyes; I am still able to see myself writing “Shi is biutafoll”, instead of “She is beautiful”.

It took many years and practice to learn how to write a sentence. My friends would often make fun of me because I could not write or speak proper English until I was seventeen years old. As I go back and reflect now I understand why it was so difficult for me to write English and gain knowledge from it at the same time. There are many situations that we as humans have to overcome; hard moments, easy moments, happy moments full of laughter. But who said learning how to write academic essays would be easy? It was hard for me to learn how to write my first language, Spanish, because of my low resources where I lived in a small community of houses and few people where we could barely afford a ride to go school. But most difficult and challenging was to write my second language English.

According to my parents and our culture I was supposed to know how to cook and clean because one day I will have to cook for my husband. I was so tired and desperate despite the fact that my parents did not understand how school was my top priority. Due to this situation my past academic essays were horrible. I was on a stage of my life where I did not know understand nor differentiate conjugating verbs, whether it was written in past tense, present tense, or future tense. Writing is very hard for me, especially those essays involving use of sources. As Annet Lammot writes, “The first draft is the child’s draft…knowing that no one is going to see it, and that you can shape it later “(113). In one of my essays I wrote a narrative story instead of a persuasive essay and without revising it. Since I did not choose a side of the essay and my sources were there but I did not explain how they are related to the prompt. For this reason I would like to keep on improving day to day to become a better writer. On the other hand my high school AVID (Advanced Via Individual Determination) teacher fully supported me during my learning process. In my English class I used to write “voat”, rather than “boat”. Now I understand that “V” is labiodental which means that the lips never close. But when you say “B” you begin with the lips closed because is a bilabial plosive. “I’d write a lead paragraph that was a whole page…bird by bird, and the critics would be sitting in my shoulders commenting like cartoon characters” (Lammot 112). Just like this I learned how to write personal essays and analyze writings in my AVID Class both English and Spanish.

Considering English as my second language I have learned the rules to write essays but I still feel the sensation that I’m doing something wrong and the teacher is going to laugh at me. To my advantage I always have a plan in advance, personally I find myself writing in the morning than in the afternoon. That way I do not have to be cramming the night before my essay is due. In addition, I always had such a self determination to work hard and achieve great things no matter how long it would take to get there. I was born and raised in Queretaro, Mexico. I arrived to the United States when I was 10 years old. As I got here to California I thought that, “Many people who have trouble writing believe that writing is a mysterious process that the average person cannot master” (Hairston 99). That is why I decide to look for people who were able to help me become a better student both emotional and physical when it comes to writing. “When student’s complete first draft, they consider the job of writing done and their teachers too often agree” (Murray P. 117). Throughout my experience as a college student I discover that writing in college is different from high school. Because in high school I would usually receive strategies to learn how to write, so I could take it to the next level in college.

The ideas that I read from some writers in the book Language Awareness will help me to be successful at California State University, San Bernardino. “Successful writers revise as they write and expect to do two or more drafts of anything they write” (Hairson P.100). Since I will be engaged in many activities at school where I will read, think, analyze, compare and come up with bright ideas to make any essay worth a lot. My school and my professors showed me how far I could go. They are mentoring me on what is good and bad. I have worked hard and thanks to that I am currently in college and soon start teaching Spanish in high school. But first I will be learning more about myself. However now I understand that writing is a fundamental element in the process of our learning, because it enables us to develop abilities in our academic writing.

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