Pezzoli 1

Luca Andrade Pezzoli

Angela Orozco

ENC 1101

9/11/23

Major assignment draft 1

Will learning a second Language be hard? Will I make friends as soon as I arrive in the

US? How will I be able to create sentences and essays in English? These were the questions I

was asking myself when moving to the US from Brazil. With English being my second

Language, I was really scared how I would learn how to read, write and speak. Thankfully, I was

able to find people who would help me achieve my goal and learn the English Language.

When I first started learning English in Brazil at 8 years old, my parents wanted me to

learn how to read in English first so I could build my vocabulary. With this goal in their mind,

they put me in an English school, hired a private tutor and only showed me movies with English

subtitles. At my English school, we would read short stories in English and Portuguese, so

everyone understood what they were reading. To implement more understanding of the story, my

tutor would review some vocabulary in the text and recommend me to watch a movie in English

with English subtitles so I could start understanding hoe to pronunciation words. This was just

preparation for my next big step which was how to communicate in English.

After arriving in the US at the age of 9, I knew how to read a decent amount in English,

but I was shy of speaking it because I didn’t want to say the wrongs things and mispronunciation

of words. However, my dad had the great idea of putting me in a soccer league at the near by
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Church. There, I was fortunate enough to have a coach who was able to integrate me with my

teammates. He went out of his way to learn some Portuguese in order to communicate with me

and gave me soccer articles so I could learn some skill while reading in English. This coach was

the definition of a literacy sponsor in my life. As Brandt said: “They lend their resources or

credibility to the sponsor but also gain benefits from their success,” (168). This coach was able to

give me resources he knew would help me improve my soccer skills and allow me to learn

English. Throughout the season, my team went undefeated with me scoring at least 2 goals per

match. Also, I was able to communicate with my teammates and was able to make so many new

friends. However, my biggest struggle was yet to come, how to write in English.

The first day of 4th grade was probably the most difficult day of my life. All eyes were on

me as the new kid in school. When all the kids learned that I was from a different country, they

couldn’t stop asking me to speak my native language. I was shocked to see everyone wanting to

talk to me, so I became shy I pretended I didn’t really know English. After the teacher introduced

herself, she had us write goals that we wanted to achieve by the end of the school year. I got

super nervous when she gave a piece of paper with lines for me to write as I didn’t really practice

writing sentences in English. I was scared to misspell words and change the order of nouns,

verbs and adjectives. So, I tried my best and then went up to the teacher to see if she could see if

what I wrote was correct. When she told me that it was correct, I became so happy. From that
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moment on, I started to write summaries on the books that I was reading in order to practice as

much as I could.

Learning a second Language has its difficulties. This creates questions that people

wonder if they will be able to achieve. By having great literacy sponsors, the journey becomes

easier and enjoyable. Learning how to read, write and speak English has got to be one of my

biggest accomplishments. I couldn’t be more thankful for all the people that helped me become

who I am today. Now I speak Portuguese, English and Spanish. I can’t wait to learn more

languages and have the same feeling as I did while learning English.

Work cited.
Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 49, no.
2, 1998, pp.165-185.