My name is Yasmina, I am a 22-years old student of Biology and English for educational purpose.
Actually, I am from Germany, I was born near Frankfurt and I grew up there but my parents are from Marocco. Due to the bad economic situation in their homeland, my parents decided to immigrate to Germany in the 1970s. My father is a worker and my mother is an analphabetic housewife. The reason why I am telling these facts is that I want people to understand under which circumstances children, whose parents are immigrants, are living and learning. Parents are often not well educated and there are mostly no books at home.
Apart from English, I also speak a little bit of French. Since I was brought up bilingual, I speak Arabic and German as well. However, I can only speak Arabic fluently in BICS, but unfortunately, I can only write and read moderately. That is because my mother was not able to teach me the Arabic language in CALP. That means that the German language is for me a more or less foreign language as well which I first learned due the television.
When I was in the kinder garden, I did not have many friends and I now believe that the reason was the language. I did not speak as well as the natives did and so I might seem stupid for them, so it was not worth playing with me.
In the primary school our teacher showed us the library and since then, I borrowed books once a month approximately and I found my favor in reading. Since then I become better in writing and speaking-in CALB! This took its time and I assume that I needed about nine years to become an adequate writer. Even though I am not as good as the others are in writing academically, neither in German nor in English, nor in Arabic.
