A Journey to Bilingualism: My Adventure With Arabic and English - Essay Sample

Introduction

My upbringing revolved around my native language, which is Arabic. It is unusual since I was taught Arabic as my original language, and over the years, I learned English, therefore, making me bilingual. This means that I can converse with much more diverse cultures, which automatically make my life of cultural exploration quite motivating. I used to watch television and movies which had subtitles of English, and with time, I began to go through the subtitles without skipping or being left behind. Like any healthy young growing up person, I was intrigued by reading and learning more about the English language and even writing it. I did not forget Arabic as well since I used to visit the library and read both words.

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What intrigued me most about reading and writing was that I used to learn something new upon every literature material I went through. Despite whether it reached my expectations or not, I used to grasp something new from the books and journals I read. The genres I enjoyed the most were mystery and horror movies since there was something intriguingly captivating about the suspense and plots of the books that kept me at bay. I used to deeply analyze the characters and understand the protagonist and antagonist as well as the main plot that the narrator wanted us to grasp.

Many of my fellow youths also learned English, and we would begin to speak it together as another way of getting together and even improving our English. This was essential since some people learned from different sources, and therefore there was diversification of vocabulary, which helped me and the rest of my peers understand more. Reading and writing became a hobby for me, and what made me love it more is that I was using both languages. This made me feel pretty smart since I had achieved bilingualism, something that not all humans get to execute. Little did I know that upon integration with the system, I would get a different concept on reading and writing.

I met many diverse cultures, and since I was bilingual, it was easy to interact with them and make friends. However, the institutional standards required an individual to read and write very extensively and not just any content but the one provided by the system. This made me begin to view reading as a punishment. The same way I despised mathematics and saw it as a burden was the same way I begin to see my previous hobby. I hated writing, reading, and anything to do with it simply because of the institution regulations and therefore began to slug around in advancing since the motivation I initially had was fading away.

What made me have to embark on the learning journey was when I went to the United States, approaching graduation. I accepted I needed help, and I was not afraid to reach out to family, friends, and teachers for moral and academic support. They all helped me since wherever I found a difficulty, I sought help from them, and they aided without fail hence making my stay in the United States easy. The tremendous efforts in which they helped me make me undoubtedly indebted to them, and I am so thankful for their support all through my learning. I added more practice since I determined to achieve a proficient level of English that would be free of difficulty.

I later came to realize that I was not the only one that experienced a flux in the reading and writing interest. Almost half of the individuals who initially pursue reading and writing as their hobby come to drop it further on in their life after indulging in the rules and regulations that institutions set for people. The environmental factors that evoked me to continue reading were because everyone around me was busy learning new things every day, and if I did not conform and do the same, then I would be left behind. In the United States, this is not a good thing; it is, in fact, a disaster, and to avoid all this, when you go to Rome, do as the Romans do.

Initially, I used to read all the time; even during break times and relaxing hours, I would occasionally indulge myself with a book, whether it was boring or not, as long as it was foreign. I had never seen it. I was sure it held something new waiting to teach me, and therefore I had to reach out since I had a thirst for learning. The art of reading and writing is like a talent that is nurtured through hobby and practice. An individual learns to express their emotions and inner thoughts or desires through writing. Also, the material which an individual reads tells a lot about someone since this literature is what shapes their mentality and mode of thinking. Since I like investigative movies, my mindset has been formed in such a way that I have learned to analyze and even pay attention to detail, thanks to the literature I have been exposed to.

The education systems existent all aim to restrict the diversity of information by specifying the material to read and hence omitting so much more information that could have been of use. In my opinion, this should not happen, and people should be given the liberty to read and write whatever they want as long as it is politically correct and does not offend any other individuals. The United States is considered the land of the free since there is so much freedom. I utilized this freedom to further my learning and understanding of English. Sometimes it is difficult to write as I have to visualize word by word in order to piece a grammatically correct sentence. This is cumbersome, but I have managed to combat it over the years, and I can say I am getting better at it by day.

Despite focusing on the grammatical correctness of a material or any errors that might have been made along the literature works, it is sometimes vital to focus on the point that the writer intended to pass on. The end of a narrative or any literary work may be mind-blowing and unique. However, the fact that it contains grammatical errors may cause it never to see the light of day in publishing. In my opinion, the main reason for writing is so that an individual can express their emotions meaning that if the literature for reading and writing is restricted, there will be a different persona that will be formulated who is molded in accordance with the restrictions set up.

The main aim of this ethnography was to focus on talking about myself and my endeavors through my campus life and relocation to the United States. Also, it shows the benefits of being bilingual in any situation whereby, in my case, when I went to the United States, it was easy to get along with my fellow peers and even the grownups. I did a little bit of research and found out that I am not the only one who has lost passion for reading and writing upon seeing the system's restrictions. Many individuals who are in their teenage years prefer freedom, and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to go to the United States.