Alondra Salgado

Dear Ms. Figueroa,

I moved to the United States when I was 5 years old, and entering a new environment and having

to adapt to a new language has always created a barrier in the way that I write and speak. Although, all of

those struggles and challenges made me grow as a writer, and surprisingly enough, I ended up loving

literature and writing essays; English became my favorite subject in school. Growing up, I always

struggled with distinguishing my first language, and the new language I was trying to adapt to. I was

always picked n because I couldn’t understand my other classmates. It took me about three years before I

could actually become fluent in English and once I did, my confidence got better. From middle school

through high school, I took advanced English courses, not because of the college credit that I could have

possibly received, but because I knew that I could genuinely succeed in those courses. I believe that

editing and revising all of my English writing assignments from throughout my senior year helped me

reflect on the mistakes that I’ve made in them, and how I can improve from those mistakes. Setting goals

has also made me feel more set on how to improve for future assignments. I feel confident that the work

that I am including in my portfolio is some of my best written work of not only my senior year, but

throughout my whole high school career. I also believe that it represents the type of person that I am. I am

most proud of my social issue paper, because it was the one I took most of my time on, and not only that,

it was based on a topic that I am passionate about. I poured my soul into that piece. I also believe that

working on my revisions and writing my reflections made me look back on how I used to write, how

much I have improved, and how I can learn from my past writing errors. Also, receiving feedback from

my teacher helped me improve my writing, because I was getting input from someone from a

professional, and it helped my writing improve after every writing assignment, because I was receiving

the correct feedback. When other read my work, I want others to feel what I feel, and see what I see, I

want my reader to feel emotion, feel inspired, and be moved. I am passionate about literature and I love it

when my writing can impact others in positive ways. One of my favorite things growing up was writing
stories and publishing them online, and getting positive feedback from people who read my writing was

the best part of it all. Again, I surprised myself when I wrote my social issue essay, because of how well-

written it was, and how much material was in it. The amount of time and effort that as put into that piece

is more than I have ever put into a writing assignment.