ESL Student Galyna: The Adult School is Great

Evening ESL Students celebrated Adult Education Week with an Essay Contest.

Essay Contest Writer Galyna Marasina, a student in Teacher Andy's class, shares her essay here:

Today I'd like to share my experience with the Adult School in San Mateo.  So, to start off, I would like to say that I come to California just two and a half months ago and my knowledge of English was quite poor.  In addition, I had some kind of a language barrier for speaking in English. So first days in the USA were like a challenge for me because I was afraid to ask people about directions, transports, and many other things.  So I decided to find a school and started to improve my language skills.  Fortunately, I fouind this school.  Thanks to our classes, my English has become much better.  We have a lot of listening, speaking, writing and grammar practice.  So now I even can start a conversation with different people in the street or on public transport, myself, and I am not afraid to do it.

Also, I met a lot of interesting people here from all over the world.  It is amazing because all these people are absolutely different.  They share with me their knowledge of cultures, traditions, dishes of their countries and, certainly, this increases my knowledge about the world.  For example, recently my classmate who is from Mexico, told me about their tradition of celebrating girls 15 birthdays.  They call it "Quinceanera."  It was very interesting for me because in my country we don't have such a tradition.

I'm going to talk more about the support system which this school offers to their students. If someone has some problems not only study, but also with a family or a work, he or she has the opportunity to ask for help from school staff.

Sometimes we have lectures about very important parts of our lives.  For instance, we had a speaker who told us how to protect ourselves.  I think it was very useful.  And also we listened to a speaker who gave us information about recycling.  It was very interesting.

In addition, I would like to say that we spend in this school 3 hours a day, 4 times a week, so it is a great amount of time.  Certainly, this school has become a big part of our life.

To sum up, the Adult School is great.  It gives me a lot of important knowledge about different countries and an American style of life.  It helps me to improve my English and find a lot of new friends.

Thanks, Galyna, for sharing your essay and inspiring others.

Galyna, Susana, and Saul
after they read their essays.