Speech Contest and My Story

Hi.  My name is Lucas.  Mom is letting me write on this page for the first time.  Here is a rough draft of my speech for contest.  I hope you like it, it tells some things about me.

My name is Lucas and I was born and lived in the Philippines until I was adopted three years ago.

When I lived in the Philippines my name was Lowie Liguid.  I was raised in an orphanage in Zamboanga City on the island of Mindanao.

My birth language was Tagalog.  I also spoke a dialect called Visayan.  I did not know any English until three years ago.  I began learning English when I was told that my brother and I were going to be adopted.

My life in the orphanage was very hard.  The children who live there have to work hard around the orphanage.  When I turned seven I had many jobs such as kitchen chores, cleaning, helping feed the babies and laundry.  

There are many children who live in the orphanage and some were mean to me.  When I would walk to school sometimes other kids would pick on me.

The food we would eat in the orphanage is different from what we have here in America.  Sometimes I miss having the food I ate in the Philippines but I have more food now and it is good too.

When I learned that I was going to have a family in America I was excited and scared.   I am glad I know how to work hard because learning a new language and learning what it is like to live with a dad and mom and sisters is not easy for me.

I started school two weeks after I came to America.  It was very confusing.  The school is very different and has many different rules.  I was very lucky that the other kids helped me and the teachers too.  I was scared at my American school because in the Philippines if I did something wrong at school I would have to hold out my hand and the teacher would hit it with a stick.  I did not know if that was a rule in America, I was glad that it is not.

There were so many new things to learn when I came home.  I have had to learn English by listening to other people.  They taught me the names of things at home and at school.  Sometimes I think they might get tired of having to say things over and over to me so that I understand.

 I have had to learn to be a part of a family with people that I had never met.  It was scary in the Philippines because I only had my brother at the orphanage.

I also wanted to make friends here in America but I don’t always understand them.    My friends teach me so many things each day but I don’t think they know how much.  They teach me games, rules, how to be a friend but also how to speak and understand English.

I began preparing to learn English while still in the Philippines but the hard work really began with an 18 hour trip from Manila, to Tokyo, to Minneapolis and then to Omaha.  My teachers, parents and other friends have helped to teach me how to speak English but to also read and write this hard language.

I am not the only English language learner in our school.  In America 1 out of 10 students in a class room is an English language learner.   Learning to speak, understand, read and write English is so important to me.  It let’s me be a part of my new home and gives me the chance to grow up to be the best possible person I can be.

That is Lucas' rough draft.  He and his teacher are still working to whittle it down a little as it does run over the time allotted.  It's hard to cram 13 years into 5 minutes.  Overall the project I knew was coming and dreading has gone pretty well.  We will see how he handles a crowd listening to him, he doesn't like people to pay too close attention to his speaking as he's very aware that he doesn't sound or speak like others.  No matter how it turns out or even if he flat out refuses and his grade suffers it's ok.  He's learned a lot through the project and we are happy that he tackled it.