6- The result

What was the result of this education system?  Actually, the grammar helped me in some way. For example, the morphemes system eased my learning by understanding the functions of each bound morpheme, so I did not need to memorize the meaning of each word in the dictionary. It was enough to memorize the free morphemes, and then I could use them in many different meanings by adding bound morphemes. I used to translate every English sentence to my first language to understand it. Of course, both languages have different tree diagrams. Therefore, I needed to compare the tree diagrams of my first language to the English. When I understood English syntax very well, I could correct the word order for my English sentence, and make a limitless number of sentences.

It was very easy for me to make a sentence in English, but it was not easy to pronounce it. I could understand the written language much easier than verbal. Reading a short article was taking a long time for me, because I was using the dictionary to translate most words. When I was writing, I focused on grammar and spelling more than expressing myself, so I was very slow. I was very happy when I started to write on Microsoft Office Word program, because it helped me with grammar and spelling, so it gave me a chance to focus on expressing myself. I could not watch an American movie without Arabic subtitles. I could understand people from their body language more than their English, unless they talked really slow and very clear. I have a very deep accent that made it difficult for some people to understand me, so if I met foreign people I tried not to have a deep conversation with them, because I knew that I would not be able to express myself well. Also my deep accent made Egyptian people make fun of my pronunciation when I tried to speak English, so I did not try.

I learned American History in Arabic language, so I did not understand American people when they talked about their history, even though I knew the topic, because I did not know the vocabulary of this topic, so I tried to translate them literally. For example, I called the civil war “national war” and the world war “international war”.