How to Tame a Language: Do we even need to take it seriously if we learn it through people?

Learning a new language is usually described as something serious: grammar rules, textbooks, silent classrooms, and long essays. But for many immigrants which includes me, a language doesn’t start in a classroom at all. It starts in kitchens, subways, workplaces, and conversations with people who try to understand us (an immigrants) even when our words are broken. In this essay, I want to show how language can be learned through people, not pressure, and how my own experience and even research proves that social connections can teach you more than any worksheet ever could.

When I was 17, I moved to the U.S with my mom and dad. My older sister got married and had to stay in Russia with her new family. I remember how tough it was for us to even think about this idea, my mom literally sold everything we got from furniture to our house. Hopefully not our souls (she just didn’t have enough time to find buyers). She’s a really strategic woman. When we got to New York, my dad said “Now it’s time to build your better future”, and I thought at the moment “Damn, what was stopping you to do the same back to Russia”. On the other hand, I understood why he was so unhappy at home. Moscow is a dark city. People there are not playing jokes and would’ve done anything to humiliate you and say “go back to your country, churka”. Churka is a rude word which indicates you as “foreign carrion” and marks you as a black spot in the hierarchy in such a rich area. Here, with a first step set on this land we felt such a warmth in our hearts. People were greeting foreigners in the nicest, sweetest way, like they were closest friends.

We rent an apartment with the help of my uncle. He has been a citizen of this country for almost 10 years and knew what to do. He said to me that I should go to school as soon as possible because NYC has a rule which says that no child shall stay at home and not attend school within a month. I’ve watched a lot of American shows where they had their “cool companies”, separated tables with nerds, bullies, freaks and hot chicks and I was scared to even think about how I walk through these crazy people and question myself “What if someone is gonna bully me?”. This haunted me. When I first came to school (where I’ve remained ever since), I had to take a test to determine my language and math skills. I never liked algebra, nor I wrote a mini-essay about myself entirely in Russian because I didn’t understand what they wanted from me.

As I sat and waited for my results, the school seemed very pleasant. The chancellors were very nice and relatively kind. Three women, all around 25, excitedly rushed from place to place, chatting with other students who needed help. Hearing the other students speak, I realized I would definitely be able to make friends at this school, since the main component was immigrants who knew only the basics of English. After all, this was an ESL school. It was founded by a great woman, Emma Lazarus, an American poet and activist. In one of her famous quotes she says  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” is a message that says America is ready to accept those who are poor, the tired, and persecuted. The name of the school already indicated that it was the perfect solution for immigrants ready to learn a new language with new friends who share the same fate.

In the first months of school, I didn’t really understand or figure out what I was supposed to do. I didn’t even know what my grades were until we were given the midterm report card. But I always had fun in class. Every day, coming to school, I entered the classroom with enthusiasm, expecting to meet new people. In class, even though I didn’t fully understand the material, the first adults I made friends with were the teachers, who opened the world of socialization to me. My English teacher, Miss Clark, was always kind to me. I remember her blonde haircut and bouncy curls that evoked something warm, like the sun. It suited her perfectly, because her manner of speech is imprinted in my head to this day.

Another thing I started noticing is that a lot of language learning happens through simple imitation. I never thought of it as a “technique,” but I always caught myself copying the way Miss Clark talked or how my friends pronounced new words. Later I learned that this is actually a real pattern. Kari Warfelt (2012), a researcher who focuses on how identity and social environments shape the way we learn languages, explains that many learners copy native speakers or teachers because it makes the language easier to process and remember. When I read this, it suddenly clicked for me. That was literally me in my first year by listening carefully, repeating the same tone or rhythm, and basically learning English through people, not through worksheets. It felt natural, like picking up someone’s laugh or slang without even thinking about it.

Over time, in the first level of ESL, I made a lot of friends from different countries. Our conversations weren’t very well structured, but they were filled with deep and innocent emotions. They would begin something like this: “Hi, what’s your name? Where are you from? Wow, you’re from Russia? Incredible! Let’s be friends!” I always really liked telling people that I was from Russia and could speak Russian, because being Asian, this surprises many people. Towards the middle of my studies, in the fourth level of ESL, Miss Clark came up to me and asked if I would like to start my own club based on my hobbies. I’ve always loved making things with my hands, and I even once shared my creations with her, like clay jewelry or paper flower bouquets. And I thought, why not?

At that point, I knew practically the entire school and felt right at home. When I opened my club, many of my friends came to support me and even dared to join my “Handcraft club”. Meetings were held every Thursday after school, and every time I came up with something interesting. Even when I couldn’t explain a task, the teachers helped me, and my international friends understood and supported me. I understood that school for me was preparation for the real ring, and I tried to absorb not just studies, but how to communicate with people, because I was good at it.

I remember how I began to communicate more and share my impressions with others. I was inspired by conversations with teachers, whom I tried to emulate, because their English seemed so correct and therefore sweet to the ear. I loved how we exchanged jokes and real-life situations during school clubs. I organized many interesting events where our parents also came, and together we made something with our hands! Outside of school, I still found it difficult to maintain a dialogue on new topics, but I was happy to laugh or share grief with someone.

And this is exactly the moment when I started to understand something important about language. That we don’t always learn it “the serious way”, like sitting in a classroom with grammar books. We learn it through people. And I’m not the only one who feels this way  research also proves it.For example, Xu and Zhang (2022), two researchers who study immigrant communities and how language shapes people’s daily lives, found that immigrants with low English skills rely on something they call “need-based networking,” which basically means that language barriers push people into social groups where they depend on each other for support. In their study, they write that “lower degrees of English proficiency are associated with higher… networking behaviors,”and this really reminds me of how I survived my first year here. I didn’t survive it alone; I survived it because people were around me.

This idea becomes even clearer when Erika Hoff (2018), a developmental psychologist who researches how children and second-language learners acquire speech, explains that language growth depends on “the opportunity to participate in conversation.” That’s literally what I did every day without even thinking about it.Broken English jokes, messy conversations, me trying to say something and people trying to understand me and this was my real English class. And honestly, that’s why I think broken English has its own beauty. People who speak like that are not bad at English; they just put their emotions into the words they know.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that language is not even only about socializing and sometimes it becomes the only way to survive your first months in a new country. Many immigrants literally build their lives around the little English they know, and they fill the rest with trust in other people. Research also says the same. Xu and Zhang (2022) talk about how immigrants with low English skills face real-life problems like understanding signs, talking to police, or just feeling nervous and that’s why they call these social groups “need-based social networking.” And honestly, this is exactly what I saw around me: people helping each other translate letters, explain doctors’ instructions, or even just order food. Language becomes a teamwork project.

And Hoff (2018) kind of confirms this from another side. She explains that bilingual people “develop each language at a slower pace” when they don’t hear enough of it, or when most of the English they hear comes from nonnative speakers. And this fits so perfectly into my experience. Most of the English I heard came from immigrants like me, so of course it sounded different. But it was not wrong. It was human. In some way, all of us were building our English together, piece by piece, from every person we ever talked to.

I also believe that when you’re in a new environment, as most immigrants do, they live their lives, they live in the moment, savor every meal, explore new things, and share their experiences. They’re willing to overcome obstacles, the most tolerable of which is the language barrier, which is difficult to overcome, but can be overcome even without going to special institutions. They don’t have time to spend days studying the language. As you get into your twenties, the opportunities to learn a language become fewer and fewer, while the needs become greater. Work fills most of your life because you have to pay for food, bills, housing, and transportation, all of this doesn’t just fall out of the sky. I know all of this because my parents gave me this opportunity to live a new, better life like this. 

Works Cited

Warfelt, L. M. (2012). Language acquisition. Nova Science Publishers.

Hoff, E. (2018). Bilingual development in children. In D. Miller (Ed.), Theories of Language Development. Cambridge University Press.

Hoff, Erika. “Bilingual Development in Children of Immigrant Families.” Child Development Perspectives, U.S. National Library of Medicine, June 2018, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5966288/. 

The New Colossus | The Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus. Accessed 5 Dec. 2025. 

Translation 2: In the second translation which is visual assignment, I created a meme where I used popular meme format and changed it into my own life experience joke. I chose it because I think memes function as contemporary rhetorical tools: they compress complex ideas into familiar visuals and rely on shared cultural knowledge to communicate meaning quickly and effectively. Because of this, I explored how humor can strengthen an argument and make it more accessible to a broader audience.This project demonstrates my understanding of visual rhetoric and my ability to adapt academic ideas to modern forms of communication.