My mother and I came the United States in 1992 to reunite with my father after twelve years apart. I was only an eighth grader with no knowledge of any English when I left Vietnam for America. It took me a full year struggling with special English classes to catch up with others in school and did well in regular English classes. Looking back from now, I think it was good to go through that hard time in life trying to learn English so I could do well in college level English classes.
             We came to America in the month of January, so I could not start school right away but there was a place that offered English tutoring from morning to evening Monday to Friday, and I started to learn English the following week.
             An American teacher who helped me to correctly pronounce English words and to develop my reading skill taught the morning class. She would patiently help me until I fully understood her lesson. She gave me ten vocabulary words each day and told me to learn them by heart. She as well let me and other students talking in English to toughen the conversation skill.
             I also went to the evening class, which was taught by a Vietnamese teacher who mostly spent time helping me with English grammar. He usually explained in Vietnamese so I had a better understanding the uses of different grammatical patterns. Moreover, I wrote journals to apply those patterns and he would tell me if I did well or not.
             Several months passed by and it was time for me to go to high school. The English teacher made students write a lot of essays. Before writing an essay, she told students to read the essays in the book, which related to the topic she wanted students to write about. Sometimes she divided the class into different groups to discuss the topic so we could understand the topic well. Since this was the first time for me to go to school here, I, like most foreign student, had a hard time catching up wi
             ...