Audio Essay Reflection

I honestly disliked this essay. The fact that I had to present it made it a lot worse than just having to write an essay. As I have said in my essay, I have an accent and am not about to pronounce some phonemes properly. This made me really self-conscious when talking. This in addition to me being shy, makes it extremely hard to present things even when it is prerecorded. I feel like when you are presenting something, all the attention is on you and I really hate that. It makes me nervous, anxious, and scared. I feel like I really exposed myself in my essay. I talked about a medical procedure I have had in the past and how I had to have speech classes. This honestly made me feel vulnerable. Listening to my classmates’ essays, I was about to relate to many of them.

In Gary’s essay, he talks about not being about to speak the language so he wasn’t able to ask the teacher to use the bathroom. I have had a similar experience to this. Until kindergarten, I have never been in a place where those who are taking care of me don’t understand Chinese. I had the knowledge to be able to ask to use the bathroom in English, but I was too shy to speak in English or at all especially in this whole new environment of the school. This made me also suddenly run out of the class to use the bathroom and having the teacher chase after me.

I also have had similar experiences to both Jenny and Elaine, where their parents aren’t fluent at English. This led their parents to ask them to help them throughout their day with reading, writing and translating. My parents also would ask me to help them with these acts but not to the extent of my classmates. My parents both immigrated to the United States as teenagers and gave up the chance to go to school to work and allow their youngest sibling to attend school. This helped me because the youngest siblings have learned English and unless they aren’t available or it is something minor, they wouldn’t ask me but ask their sibling.