English as a Second Language
2 of 40
Hello, and welcome to the second edition of 40B40. This essay tells the story of how I learned English in Mexico during the 90s—it was wild. This one goes out to everyone who has ever tried to learn this wonderful language and whose native tongue doesn’t have some of the sounds letters make in English. The struggle is real! I hope you enjoy it, and don’t forget to subscribe!
In the fall of 1990, my second-grade teacher started a side hustle. He talked to several parents about teaching English to their children on Saturday mornings. He even got permission from the principal to use a classroom in our school. Looking back, it seems sketchy. However, my dad was a teacher at the same school, and I assume he and my mom thought it was a good idea for me to start learning a second language, so they enrolled me. And so, I didn’t watch the Saturday morning cartoons for three years because I was learning English with a dozen other kids.
Then something interesting happened. Canada, the U.S., and Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). So, the Mexican government launched an after-school program to teach English to kids in fourth through sixth grades. I was part of the “pilot class” in the fifth grade. I thought I wouldn’t get to do a third year since I had graduated from Elementary School, but since both my parents are teachers, they pulled some strings, and I was able to finish the program. I appreciate my parents' effort to go into some grey areas for me to learn a second language. Also, it was the nineties in Mexico, so things were pretty different then. At this point, I had been learning English for about six years and was starting to get confident. Almost too confident.
The Junior High Schools curriculum in Mexico includes English as a subject. Unfortunately, everything they taught I already knew. To make matters worse, my English teachers could have been better. Think about any skit that portrays a Spanish teacher in an American high school when faced with a native speaker and reverse it. I tried to help as much as a cocky teenager could help. I aced those classes for the three years of Junior High and made a few teachers uncomfortable when I corrected their pronunciation. Like I said, I was a cocky teenager.
When I was twelve, my mom took me to a school where all they did was teach English. So I took a placement test to asses in which level class I could start. It turns out your boy was at the highest level. However, they also offered specialized grammar, phonetics, and reading comprehension courses. But one caught my attention; the “conversation circle” focused on practicing your speaking and presenting skills in English. That sounded fun, so I told my mom to enroll me. I was in for a shock when I opened the door to that classroom.
The room was full of people at least ten years older than me. I was the Doogie Howser of that class. Still, I acted like I belonged; after all, I could speak the language and hold a conversation which is what we were in there for, so it didn’t seem to matter how old I was. Our teacher once asked if anyone would want to prepare a presentation on AIDS. I raised my hand and said I would do it. However, being twelve and not knowing what AIDS was, I thought she meant First Aid. I was in the Boy Scouts and had just taken a course on it, so—in my mind—the timing was perfect.
The following week I presented on First Aid, not AIDS. It was a solid presentation. I taught the class how to treat cuts and burns, stop the bleeding by applying a tourniquet, and improvise an arm sling with a bandana. I finished my presentation, and my teacher thanked me for the information and gently explained what AIDS was. She didn’t seem to care that much since I could present in English, which was the goal of the exercise, regardless of the topic. Years later, I watched the movie “Philadelphia” and thought, “That’s what she was talking about.”
I took six semesters of English in High School and focused on reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. It was the first time I had native speakers teach me English, which was refreshing. In addition, I got introduced to the Test Of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), a standardized test to measure the English language ability of non-native speakers, which was part of the final. I would get very nervous when taking the TOEFL because there is a listening, writing, and reading comprehension portion at the end. I was a slow reader then—still am, who are we kidding?—and sometimes I would be in a time crunch. Still, I managed to get a good grade.
At this point, I was consuming a lot of television, music, and films in English. However, I would still need to turn on closed captions when someone’s accent in English was different from what I was used to in class; whenever I talked to someone not from Texas, I would ask them to repeat themselves. There was a British boy in a pool that I had no idea what he was talking about, even though I knew he was speaking English. And there was a time I had difficulty ordering food in Louisiana before I knew what different accents in the U.S. sound like.
At the beginning of my professional career, I was a near-shore engineer. If India was off-shore, Mexico was near-shore. I worked on several projects for U.S.-based companies, so I read, wrote, and spoke English for forty hours a week. Sometimes, a client would say, “Are you from Mexico? You don’t have an accent.” Hearing this would give me a sense of pride and achievement. The perfectionist in me has always wanted to speak the language as correctly as possible. But I’m not perfect, and my native-speaker wife keeps me humble.
In Mexico, V and B sound like B; in English, they do not. I mix up the “ch” and “sh” sounds when angry or after a few drinks. Saying, “She’s a chef that shapes cheese on chairs,” can be a challenge. I butcher idioms like it is my job. I still have no idea when to use “in” versus “on.” The sounds in words like bet, beet, and bit. How do you know when to say live versus live? You may have gotten that one wrong too.
The more English I learn, the more absurd it becomes. It is a silly language of exceptions. But I love it. So much so that my inner voice, my inner monologue, happens in English. Sometimes I even dream in English. It has become second nature. I mean, heck, sometimes it’s easier for me to write in English than in Spanish. I can craft concise sentences and paragraphs with fewer words. It’s the language I have used to communicate with my wife, children, friends, and co-workers over the last ten years, and I will speak it until I no longer can.
Do you know what’s funny about all of this? Neither one of my parents speaks English. They spent time and money on making their children learn a second language and then used them as interpreters. If that is not genius, I don’t know what is.
Before you go
I have some questions for you.
What’s your native language? How do you say poop in your native language?
Do you speak a second/third language?
If English is your second language, when did you start learning it?
Do we agree English is a language of exceptions?
What’s your favorite English idiom?
My moms brothers and dad say “six of one, half a dozen the other.” When I was a kid I was like “what is this code of numbers!?” Then I figured it out when I was like 15. I remember thinking “this is stupid, just say, ‘it doesn’t matter,’ it is less words.”
I've always wondered what language an ESL person's inner voice speaks. Thank you for answering the question before I had to work up the courage to ask. Reading your posts, I would never guess that your first language is not English. You write better than a lot of native English speakers.