Aboufoul 1

Mohammad Aboufoul
Professor Blandford
UWRT 1103
14 September 2015
Arabic Struggles
When I try to think back to how I learned English, nothing specific comes to mind. All I
can remember is that I could speak it, I learned the alphabet in preschool, and soon after, I
became able to read words that I later strung together into sentences. As much as I try to
remember any struggles or difficulties or day to day challenges in becoming more and more
literate in English, Im left with gaps in my memory. What does stick out to me, however, is my
journey in learning Arabic.
As a child, I was raised in a Middle Eastern household. My parents and family members
had only spoken in Arabic and expected the same of me. Before going to preschool, my only
experiences with English were from watching TV shows like Barney, Sesame Street, and
Bill Nye the Science Guy, as I was told by my mother. So for the first three years of my life,
before I learned to read or write in any language, I had been absorbing a mix of English and
Arabic. About a year after I began preschool, a Sunday school for the Muslim community had
opened up in Charlotte. Their focuses werent solely based on Islamic studies as they made sure
to set aside time for Arabic lessons. I remember my first day walking into the class. Everyone
had already arrived as my mother guided me in and spoke to the instructor. She soon left as I
joined the group.
The first thing I noticed was that I was the youngest one in the room. I felt a bit
intimidated, but soon relaxed as everyone was so welcoming. The teacher gave each student an

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odd character on a piece of construction paper. Mine looked like a crescent moon with a dot over
the edge of it. The teacher began the first lesson by telling us of the Arabic alphabet and all of its
twenty-eight letters. My letter was Zayn, the Arabic equivalent of Z. The days that soon
followed were quite informative and enjoyable. I learned about how the letters connected
together to form words and how they changed shape in the process. I learned how to pronounce
text that had previously looked like hieroglyphics and soon, how to read simple sentences. Of
course I had read very slowly at first and stuttered quite a bit that year, but in my defense, I was
only four years old.
The year ended and I had felt pretty special. Not many four year olds could (sort of) read
and write in two languages. The next school year began and I returned to the same Islamic school
with a different instructor. The details were quite a blur, and to be honest, I dont remember
learning anything new. We just continued practicing reading and writing Arabic without learning
anything serious. My second year passed and I was greeted with some disappointing news. The
Sunday school program was closing for good. I didnt know why at the time, but now I guess it
was due to a lack of funding. A new school had opened up not too far away to accommodate for
those who wanted to continue their studies.
For the next four to five years I attended the new school and all I can say about it is that it
was a huge waste of time. Each year, the same exact material was taught. The thing about this
school was that they started out every year with learning the Arabic alphabet from scratch and
doing exactly what I had done during my first year of Sunday school. The Arabic teachers at this
school didnt know any Arabic, which made things even worse. I left knowing nothing new with
four years of my life gone.

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At home, I had faced ridicule by my parents and my family for how little I knew after so
many years. When I visited my family overseas for the first time (I was about five), I was
practically speechless. I had thought that I was fluent enough to communicate to them and
attempted to do so at first. But of course, I made many mistakes and could barely understand
what my aunts and cousins were telling me.
After a few years, I could understand most of what they were saying, but I would still
stutter and mix words up. My family responded by laughing. Every time I would mess up, a burst
of laughter would come from whomever I was speaking to. It was worse at family gatherings.
Everyone would tell their stories and chat. When I eagerly wanted to throw in my two cents, I
would, nine times out of ten, make a silly mistake which resulted in the room erupting in
laughter for what seemed to be hours. It hurt as a child and hurt as it continued through
adolescence. Its not like the ridicule ended a day or so after each silly mistake. My family
members would be in the living room relaxing or just chatting when one of them would say,
Remember when Mohammad said _____ instead of _____! or The other day, I took
Mohammad to the market and he said _____ to the grocer! His reaction was priceless! or
sometimes Hey Mohammad, what was that thing that you said the other day? When you made
that absurd mistake? And the laughter would continue and the teasing went on and on. I would
pout and cry but that only resulted in comments like What are you a baby? Do you need me to
get you some Pampers?
It hurt to be mocked constantly. No one else would get picked on, not even my younger
sister, even though she wasnt any more fluent than me. Even my younger cousins would make
fun of me.

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As the years passed and as I became an adolescent, my family became critical of me in a
more serious manner. My parents would sit me down and would tell me to read from one of their
books. The books were an inch thick and had twenty to thirty lines of Arabic per page condensed
to a size twelve font. I would look at the text for a few seconds and then Id try to pronounce the
first word. I read at a rate of about ten words per minute. My parents sighed and then berated me
for the next few hours about how terrible I was. Theyd say that they had sent me to Sunday
school for years and that I should have a PhD in Arabic by now. Whenever some child came on
an Arabic channel and began speaking or reading Arabic fluently, my parents would compare me
to him and remind me how he was so much better than me as well as the fact that he was
younger. I would say that I had been raised in America and that I hadnt grown up in an Arabic
speaking country nor lived in one long enough, but they would dismiss my remarks as nonsense
and continue on. Overseas, my cousins and aunts would tell me not to speak to anyone in public
so that they wouldnt know that I wasnt from there. I felt that everyone was embarrassed to be
around me and that I just didnt fit in with them. No one sympathized with me or tried to help me
out in a calm, encouraging, non-condescending manner. Disapproval was all that greeted me
along with constant insults.
I had had enough. I was tired of being a laughingstock and wanted to become better so
that no one would dare mock me again. As I entered eighth grade, I began to focus more.
Whenever Aljazeera (an Arabic news channel) was on, I would look at the news ticker, the words
flying thousands of miles per second, and would try to absorb as much info as I could. On the
first couple of tries, I would be lucky to catch a word. Outside of the news, I would pick up some
old Arabic comics my cousins had given me. Each page took an hour to read and understand, and

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by the time I was done, the enjoyment to be derived from the stories would be lost. But I wasnt
doing this for my enjoyment. I had something to prove. My pride was on the line.
As I would spend my time on YouTube watching whatever was popular at the time, I
would search for anything that interested me in Arabic: cartoons, sports commentators during
recaps of soccer games, or comedic shows I had missed on TV. Again, I struggled. I understood
about one fifth of what was being said, which was better than before, but still not good enough.
This went on throughout high school, and I could feel myself getting better and better. I
would understand what was being said around me, both on TV, with my relatives, and in the
streets of the Middle East. I could read pieces of text faster and faster until I was able to carry out
SMS conversations with others in Arabic. My comprehension had become far more advanced
than what it was previously. And while I could understand more, I still struggled in expressing
myself in Arabic. I could write and speak at a much higher level than before, yet I still made
mistakes. Perhaps it was because I hadnt much practice conveying myself with someone who
was fluent yet patient and encouraging with my mistakes at the same time. Nonetheless, although
my communication skills did advance, they werent perfect, and they still arent to this day.
My experiences with Arabic as well as my attempts to advance myself in it carried on to
other aspects of my life. My desire to advance and my endeavors to achieve perfection in Arabic
changed me as a person. In school, I wanted to improve wherever and whenever possible. 100s
in my grades became a baseline, not just an ideal for me. Anything less was disgraceful. In every
competition I entered, I had my eyes set on first place and worked tirelessly to achieve such
feats. Losing to anyone in anything, even in friendly competitions, hurt. The only things that
would hurt more would be award ceremonies or competitions in which all my rivals (in
academics and other fields) won something, and I didnt. When this happened, I would feel

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devastation for the entire week. I wouldnt want to talk to anyone nor do anything other than lay
in bed all day. Often times, I would cry, a lot; sometimes crying myself to sleep. Looking back
on such times, I feel that they are linked to the pain I experienced as I learned Arabic. The
mockery of my extreme lack of comprehension (as a child) by those around me was linked to my
feelings of inferiority, which I had repressed whenever possible. Memories of the laughter and
humiliation would race to my mind the instant I showed a lack of perfection in my work or lost
to anyone. This pain that would stay hidden, waiting for me to mess up and then ambush me, is
what I spent (and currently spend) my life trying to avoid. My struggles with Arabic from such
an early age to this day are what have defined me. They are what drive me to advance and strive
towards perfection. They, and the memories that they bring of sheer embarrassment at my
mistakes, highlight not only my journey to become literate in Arabic, but also a key story in
developing my identity.