My husband and I have two children, one son and one daughter. When we came to America our son was ten years old and our daughter was six years old. Both of them didn’t know how to speak English. It was a big problem for us. I thought that my son was going to have a more difficult time adjusting than my daughter. It was the other way around.

Fortunately, my son made friends with some Albanian boys who were our neighbors. He went to school with his friends. He started to speak English very quickly.

My daughter started school for the first time. She didn’t have any friends. Every morning she left for school crying, got on the bus and sat near the window. Her eyes filled with tears and she waved at me until the bus pulled away. I don’t know how she learned English. Sometimes I would hear her speak to her dolls. She arranged her dolls in a row, wrote their names on a sticker, stuck the sticker to their foreheads, stood in front of them like a school teacher and kept repeating, “Boys and girls, boys and girls.” At that time those were the only two words in English that she knew.

After two months, we went to school for a meeting. My daughter’s teacher showed us Alba’s folder. The teacher said that Alba never spoke in the class and didn’t mingle with her friends. Nobody knew her voice.

One day in the school cafeteria Alba met an Albanian girl. They started to speak to each other. Her classmates ran to the teacher and said, “Teacher, teacher, Alba knows how to speak.” The teacher said, “Alba has her language. She knows how to speak.” I said to myself, “Oh, my God! How difficult it must be for my daughter.”

In time Alba made many friends and she started to speak with them. Now she speaks English very well and she helps me with my homework

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dolora Kocibelli is from Albania.  She has been here 6 years. She works at Shaw's Supermarket in Worcester.  She wants to find a better job. She is an advanced ESOL student at Quinsigamond Community College.