Suggestions please

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hi everyone</p>

<p>I'm a non-native speaker and International student and have studied outside of the U.S. all my life. The country I live in is very conservative and doesn't really encourage study of Humanities/Social sciences. I'm quite detached from these fields. More or often, I see that U.S. colleges emphasize a liberal arts education, encompassing all fields of study. And for that reason, despite becoming over aged and a novice to start with these fields, I've a growing interest over them.</p>

<p>What suggestions do you have for me? Not studying Literature and novels has crippled my English too as they are interrelated. I'm very bad with reading comprehension; it is very tough for me to search for an answer and I've to guess often. I don't know who Emily Dickinson or Ralph Waldo Emerson is. I haven't read any play of Shakespeare except for Macbeth (which I didn't understand too. I'm incapable of reading books due to my bad comprehension practices and drastically limits my understanding of complex sentence structures making me bored of many novels. This problem has also affected my standardized scores i.e. SAT Critical reading.</p>

<p>I've rarely written a descriptive/analytical essay on any topic. Creativity has never seen me through. To be frank, I've been an ESL student passing through all hardships that English is supposed to cause. I learn vocabulary but never seem to use them or even worse, forget them. I'm even admitting that my college admission essay was partly written and edited by my good friend (a native speaker). I excel in every subject I learn (the sciences and math) and have been the best student of my class. But English has seemed to snap my ears off. I've seen foreign IB students excelling in their theory of knowledge and other papers and easing the pain of being regarded as a 'non native' speaker. I simply don't get it why I'm incapable of achieving something which is becoming a norm today globally.</p>

<p>After such unsuccessful hurdles, I was very lucky to get into a top New England Liberal Arts College (due to its test optional admission policy). It was quite astonishing (taking my current condition into account) and hope to attend this fall. </p>

<p>But my question is, will I be able to cope up with the level of English in the U.S.? What can I do to get the English preparation of a native college freshman? Do I study SAT/AP English without taking the test? I really want to write like students do as in a high school newspaper. I'm really worried because I need to take english courses at college, which I may fail at and fear that my GPA will go down a lot. And I have high hopes for attending graduate school (apparently means GRE comes as a barrier again). </p>

<p>Sorry for writing a huge essay. Thank you for giving your time to read and answer me :)</p>

2

<p>If you want to improve your reading comprehension, the main thing that you have to do is just keep reading. If long works of literature are too difficult for you right now, that’s fine. Read newspapers (you can find the student newspaper for the college you’re considering attending on the college’s website), read magazines, read short stories. Read about things that interest you. Don’t worry about reading the “right” things so much.</p>

3

<p>No one in the past 300 years has been able to understand Shakespeare on the first reading. You’ve got to go see it performed for it to make any sense whatsoever.</p>

<p>Teenage is right - the best way to improve reading comprehension is to read a lot. Get a subscription to Time magazine and the New York Times. Same thing with writing. Start a journal and write something every day. Write something analytical in your native language and anything at all in English.</p>

<p>If you do go to NE LAC, get in touch as soon as possible with the support staff for international students. Find out what if any ESL resources are available. Find out if they have international peer assistants who can tell you how they got through that first year.</p>

4

<p>My first thought too was that you should get in touch with the school that accepted you to find out what they suggest. They accepted you for a definite reason and they are motivated to help you if you think you have a weak point.</p>

5

<p>Register for classes freshman year that fit your strengths.
Most colleges have a writing center available, with someone who can read your work and help you revise your papers.
Save the Shakespeare class for later on.</p>

6

<p>thank you for the great advice everyone :slight_smile: So that means my main target over the summer should be reading a bunch of books (easy language to start with) and then proceed on to the tough ones. Any suggestions on novels/books for a novice???</p>

7

<p>I totally agree with the suggestion not to challenge yourself too much the first semester and stay in your comfort range at first. If there is a literature requirement you can do it later. (Hemingway was know for simpler sentences, I think, and there are great ones-- both short and long).</p>