English as a Second Language It is a faint memory of mine, but I still remember learning the English alphabet for the first time at Kay’s Montessori, which was a daycare my parents had me attend at the age of five. Up until I started attending Kay’s, I only knew Vietnamese because that was the language my parents taught me as soon as I could speak. My journey to become literate in English began the day I first learned the alphabet at Kay’s. From this point on, I developed my abilities to read and write in English by attending American public schools. Although it was a struggle for me to become literate in English, these challenges motivated me to expand and improve my literacy skills. My kindergarten teacher at Boudreaux Elementary was very influential in advancing my literacy skills. She had a huge collection of basic to advanced-level reading books, and she challenged us by making a competition out of reading these books. Each student could take one book home per day, read it to our parents, and return it once we finished reading the entire book to add a sticker next to our name on the “You’re a Star” board. Since I was a competitive young girl, I was determined to get the most stickers at the end of the year by reading one book per night. Little did I know that my competitive nature would help me quickly advance my reading skills. Looking back on this, I realize that this helped me to become a better reader, and that this was one of the best things that could happen to me in my educational career. Another influence to the development of my current literacy skills was my participation in the English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) and Gifted and Talented (GT) Programs. In kindergarten and first grade, I was pulled out of class an hour each day to focus more on reading and writing in English. My ESL teacher was effective in building my reading and writing skills by assigning me various challenging yet fun activities that helped me to spell, read, write, and…