Narrative essay

 

I can hear my mom's yelling at me from the living room. "You are watching it again! Are you gonna be a drama writer or something?!" then I answer "Mom, this is my way of studying! Can't you just leave me alone?" When I was 16 years old, I got a chance to go to the United States to study abroad. Studying abroad in the United States was the fulfillment of my dream. I was really excited and nervous about going to see a new and bigger world. I heard many good stories about the U.S from my family and friends so I was expecting only good experiences. When I got to the U.S, things were different from my expectations. I had so much difficulty communicating with people and also understanding different cultures. I started watching American dramas to study English and also understanding American cultures. Watching american dramas influenced me by academically and personally.

My first difficulty of studying abroad is understanding different cultures. In the first few months, I experienced many culture shocks. For examples, I had to say "Excuse me" when I even got a brush from people and also I had to say "God bless you" when I or other people sneezed. I sometimes held my sneeze just because I felt uncomfortable hearing "God bless you" from strangers. I was also discriminated because of our races and ethnic groups. Some people were really racist and rude just because I'm an asian. I started watching american dramas from the tv or the computer so that I understand better about american cultures. Sometimes it was still difficult to understand so I had to ask some of my friends who were born in the U.S. so I eventually got used to many other cultures.

Second disadvantage of studying abroad was the difficulty of communicating with people. My english was really bad that I could only say "Hi" or "Bye" at the first time when I went to the America. I went to a high school in the U.S. In classes, I sometimes didn't know what the teachers were talking about, so I would be looking around to see what other people are doing. I also sometimes missed very important information and couldn't say exactly what I wanted to say. Therefore, some people misunderstood or even ignored me. When I started watching american dramas, there was english subtitles on the bottom so I was sitting in front of the computer or the tv and wrote down words that I didn't understand. I looked through the dictionary to see the meaning of words. I also learned some slang that many people use. In korea, learning english grammars are important than words. So before watching American dramas, I was only focusing on learning grammar. However, after watching american dramas, I started to focus more on vocabulary words and also phrases that many american people use on daily basis.

To communicate better with people and friends in my school, It was good to watch american dramas. Since I was a teenager back then, many of my friends were interested in fashions or tv shows. When I only watched korean tv channels, I didn't have many subjects to talk about with my foreign friends so they kind of avoided me because I always tried to talk to them but there was not many subjects to talk about so it always became awkward situations. However, when I started to watching american dramas, I always had topics to talk about like fashions, trends, and some actors from the show so they sometimes came up to me first and then started talking about those topics. Sometimes they suggested to go to a mall together to buy some clothes from stores that was famous to many teenagers back then. We could got closer and hung out more often so I could feel less lonely than before I had no friends in the school.

Watching american dramas helped me educationally and also my own objects that I expected to achieve. I could get used to the culture and communicating with people better by watching many american dramas. Therefore, If you are getting tired and bored with studying english, you can try watching american dramas. It has many benefits like improving your english skills and also understanding other cultures better in funny way.