A winning entry from the SISC English Club x The Mover English Fortnight 2024 Essay Writing Competition.
My first words were in English, but my mother’s were in Filipino. She migrated to the USA for work but learned work stretched farther than leaving her 9-5’s office. In a country that has English mixed with slang, dialect, and plenty of other languages, my mother instilled that we, my older sister and I, would learn English. When I began learning, I gradually realized that my love for the language stretched farther than I could have ever imagined. I analyzed how my peers would mix in their Southern accents and slang with the Latin root words. I saw how my teachers would tell us stories about their families and how it taught them many life lessons. Every day, I learned more about how English is a cornerstone of what connects everyone to everything.
As I grew up in a fully English-speaking environment, I didn’t comprehend the importance of the language until I moved to the Philippines. Whilst attending an international school, I realized how important the language is to my peers. With the different cultural backgrounds that I am surrounded by in my school, what we all have in common is English. We communicate our struggles, academies, and efforts through it. When I thought about this, I pictured my mother: a woman who came to America for work, with no sense of belonging in a country said to welcome all. It hit me that English was important to her, not just for said-work, but for survival. I relayed that information to myself and thought about why English is important to me. It is the language that ties me with my mother, a bridge of the dedication she’s put in to provide me a stable livelihood. When I envision my life, English has surrounded it in many ways. In my class, I see how the language connects us not just through conversation, but with the pieces we write and the feelings that speaking to each other brings. The diverse backgrounds of my classroom share the universal language like a friendship. The language provides a sense of belonging and inclusivity for us, and prepares us for an interconnected world. We are woven together like twine and we unravel ourselves through English. It provides clarity and cultivates communication skills necessary not just for my classroom, but for the future ahead of me. A complex language such as English has brought me many ways to articulate my emotions and complexities with my academic work. It gives me a shelter to enrich myself in what I and my classmates want to say. We motivate each other through English and move each other to become better versions of ourselves. English is the
voice we hear throughout the campus every day. It is a language that we all understand and sync with. English has become a mosaic of opportunities in my life, providing my insight to how it connects us all and enriches my thoughts. My mother’s battleground was fought in Filipino, but I fight mine in English.
a beautiful essay