Preference and habits are hard to change

On the last day of 2018, I finally read the comments my elementary school teachers made about me in my report cards.  I believe my mother and I neglected to read the comments and only focused on the grades.

It was funny reading the comments on the report cards because my strengths and weaknesses were consistent throughout my elementary school years in Canada.  My major weakness in English was to attend to my final edits.  My other major weakness was the lack of participation during class discussions.  Every single teacher encouraged me to participate more in class in their comments on my report card.  I apologize that I did not read your comments until today.  I acknowledge receipt of your valid observations and I thank you for noticing me.  It really shows in your comments.

If any of you stumble across this, in response to your comments, I always disliked editing.  When I was little, I was not sure if I was editing correctly and I also valued the content I was writing more than grammatical structures.  I still have trouble with my singles and plurals and autocorrect is really not helping because it sometimes corrects incorrectly and makes assumption before I finish my typing or swiping.  I believe writing is still best learned with a pencil, eraser and paper because nothing is interrupting your thoughts.  Sometimes as I swipe on my mobile device, I feel like there is an annoying pest trying to finish my sentence.  Peer editing is great with a coloured pen!  I try very hard to edit my own work but sometimes I just don't have time.  It is sad that I did not address this weakness at a younger age.  I envy people who tells me that grammar came to them naturally.  They don't have to work for it, they don't have to think about it, correct grammar just come out naturally.  I believe grammar is harder for me because my first language is drastically different from my second language.  Anyhow, I now see the importance of having good sentence and grammar foundation because it definitely makes your writing that much better and convincing.  I also believe the correct grammar will eventually come naturally if you catch your mistakes as you speak and write.

In terms of class participation, I did not want to speak out loud because I was conscious of my accent.  I am well aware of sounds I cannot pronounce like the -n sound.  It sucks when you cannot pronounce certain sounds.  When I speak I purposely have to replace word I cannot pronounce.  I have been practicing speaking out loud by myself, I am working on intonation, pronunciation, pace and enunciation.  I am avoiding public speech still because I will get stage fright and end up mumbling quickly with an accent again.  I think I am ok at times at conveying my message across in person but it is a lot harder to do it over telephone conversation.

Anyways, I hope you are all well.  Thank you for believing in me and seeing my potentials at such a young age!  I also finally read the first year book and realized some significant events that happened that year.  It's nice to discover new things about the past in the present.