Done during Phase 1, it would be first ever assignment for my college experience. Personally it was honestly one of the best experiences to happen to me. With the professor initially encouraging us to be more creative with our expressions and our feelings. This phase would be the most important for me out of all the 4 Phases in total, all because this introduced me to the type of work we will be doing not only in class but also in the upcoming future in college. It also led to me expressing myself as creatively as I wanted.

If I were to state the most impactful moment for me in terms of literacy and language, It would truly be the whole process of me learning and mastering English, specifically with the pronunciation and writing of many words. It all started as the plane landed, and everyone clapped at the fact that we had made it safely. Seeing all the aerodromes and the planes taking off and coming around us felt like I was entering a new world. Now, Something like that has never ever happened to me. Usually, when traveling to Ecuador, it would never be that much of a problem since I’d get used to going to a country of people who looked like me and spoke a language I understood. For the most part, I felt very comfortable since also there was a large presence of family that I had known and loved for almost all my life. Yet However, when I arrived in America, it felt strange and new. It felt strange because it was things I had never seen before. Yet one thing that stood out to me was the language. Hearing the American Dialect that we talked of so much back in Spain, Everything around me, such as billboards, signs, and newspapers, was all in English. I felt very uncomfortable because I could not understand a word, nor could I pronounce anything around me. It felt like a completely new world, not even just a country. Yet reuniting with my dad after what felt like years certainly numbed all the anxiety and fear I felt. As I embraced him, all my thoughts faded away. All I could think of was that my family was whole again. Fast forward to a few months later, I was already settled in the country with my family, and I was in my first school in America. Truly, it wasn’t a pleasant experience looking back on it. As a foreign kid, I was treated as such. I would get pulled aside from classes just so I could take language exams, receive state tests in Spanish, and take special classes designed to improve my English. While it was beneficial for me to receive those accommodations, my school peers worsened the situation. They would mock my accent and make me say bad words I wasn’t aware of to the teacher. They would even stay away from me because they saw me like I was some alien that nobody wanted to get close to. Additionally, my writing was different than others because I was only taught cursive, and not only that, but I struggled with grammar in English many times. These were, in my opinion, the darkest years of my life, as they didn’t last not months but years. I didn’t feel like I belonged where I was, and I truly felt like everything was taken away from me. The inability to comprehend another language severely affected me mentally as it was extremely stressful having to deal with the fact that I would fall behind everyone else in terms of English literacy and the fact that I did not sound like an “American.”  Through constant talking and reading in English, I became very fluent. Through constant trial and error, I slowly but surely got better with my new handwriting, and I made fewer and fewer spelling and grammar errors, and I was able to get much better grades on my essays, going from the 60s to 90s. I would be able to be better understood whenever I was speaking. I learned to speak English by hearing others speak and trying to copy the movements of their mouths and whatever they did. I would look at other people’s writings and books, and I would, from there, teach myself how to spell certain words. Although the school tried to help, I was not going to a good school, so they did not provide the best level of education that I needed. So,  It was advantageous to no longer struggle with my pronunciation and grammar compared to when I just came to the country and I had the thickest Spanish accent. Indeed, It was a huge milestone in my life. This had a huge impact on every single aspect of my life. I accomplished what many failed to do. My inner voice would now either speak in Spanish or English, depending on my situation. My accent would start to change completely. It was a meaningful moment in my life because there was a significant shift in what I could and could not do. I felt proud to be bilingual, both fluent in writing and vocalization for English and Spanish, as it would go on to be helpful to me in a very diverse country with predominantly English and Spanish speakers. While I felt like I was part of a new community, at the same time, it felt like I was leaving everything behind in the past, such as my original Spanish European culture. This was a tough realization for me, as It was all I knew all my life, and suddenly all of that changed, and I became a different person. It was like transforming into a new person, reborn.  Never would I have imagined I would get to where I was. In my nuclear family, I was the only one who was able to learn. My parents still, to this day, struggle a lot with English. One example always sticks with me, and it is helping my dad speak to his boss over the phone. he would always pass the phone to me, to the point where it was a Habit, and even my dad’s boss got used to me talking. Whenever It wasn’t me speaking, he would ask me to translate. Indeed, a lot of pressure would be put on me, having to help with something I was learning. Still, it sped up my progress at the end of the day. I learned a lot faster due to the ever-increasing pressure that I felt during those years, the increase in difficulty for my classes as I entered middle school and high school, the rapidly increasing complexity of the language that I was still learning, going from simple books like the outsiders, to more advanced books like Frankenstein. Overall, it took me no more than three years to learn English fully and five years to drop my Spanish Accent. It was a long and tough road to get where I am currently. It was sad realizing that I was different from everyone else, that I spoke differently from everyone else, and that my culture was different from everyone else. Yet I’m still here. Yet through all those tough times, I persisted, and now I can fluently speak both languages and help my parents and anyone else who needs it with much more confidence and a lot more pride in what I do. I can proudly say, as an immigrant, that I was able to improvise, adapt, and overcome the hardships of coming to a new country in search of a better life.