Couldn’t speak English when she moved to U.S. at 9 years old, watched TV to learn
Imagine being 9 years old in a foreign country and attending school without knowing the language.
Michelle Concepcion Rosario was this child. Today, she is an 18–year-old student from Hahnville High School (HHS) who will graduate Friday. She has many friends and a wide open future in front.
Born in Lavega, Dominican Republic, Rosario was only 4 years old when her mother left her and her sisters with their grandmother to came to the United States. Rosario’s grandfather, her mother’s father, had been in the U.S. and Rosario’s mom wanted them to follow him.
“She went to New York at first,” she said. “But later, she moved down here with my aunt who was living in Louisiana at the time.”
After five years, Rosario’s mother sent for her girls and they were reunited in Luling. They only spoke Spanish, so attending R.J. Vial Elementary, where the other students spoke English, was a little scary, according to Rosario.But she got help.
“There was a teacher named Josephina Campbell,” Rosario said. “She spoke Spanish and translated for me for the entire year and part of the next one, too.”
Rosario said people tried to talk to her, but she didn’t understand so she just smiled.
“I think people thought I was mean because I never answered them,” she said.
By the time Rosario got to high school, she had been around long enough to speak English fairly well.Her family began to speak only English and TV was a great teacher.
“Unlike a lot of parents with kids our age, our mom encouraged me and my sister to watch TV,” Rosario said. “When we did, if we didn’t understand a word, my mother would have us go and look it up. I cannot tell you how important TV was.”
One day at school, the tables turned.
Kids began to take Spanish in high school and they flocked to Rosario, who was more than happy to help. Soon she had many friends and was widely known at Hahnville High School.
She excelled in school after that and found her best subjects to be math and French, although she was never too fond of history or social studies. She became involved in rec softball and became a member of the student council.But it was a long road for someone who had to learn the language from scratch at an older age. English, she said, is very hard and most who learn it from birth don’t realize just how hard it is.
“For example, the word ‘mean’ can be used to describe bad behavior or it can be a word that explains something else … you know what I mean?” she giggled. “And it’s spelled exactly the same way and has two separate meanings.”
Rosario goes back to the Dominican Republic every summer to visit friends and family. What she said she found ironic is all the kids speak English there now because they teach it in the schools.
The popular senior of Hahnville High School is off to Louisiana Technical College in the fall of 2015. She wants to learn to become a pilot someday.
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