Imagine being in a place that you know nothing about, don’t speak the language and home is nowhere in sight.

Sounds scary, right?

That’s how many feel when they first come to America.

Take Senior Ivana Kalinic, for example, who only spoke Serbo-Croatian when she first arrived at age nine. In March of 2000, she, along with her older sister, parents and grandparents, came to the Unites States from Paracin, Serbia. “Only my sister spoke English,” she said.

According to Kalinic, she was placed in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes for two years where she was taught by a Serbian teacher. It wasn’t until the fifth grade that she was first put into a regular class, Kalinic said. She was nervous especially when she was called on to read. “I didn’t want to mess up,” she said. Eventually, after she got the hang of it, she said, it got easier. “The hardest thing for me is writing,” she said. “Spelling is hard.”

Kalinic said it is hard to spell because in Serbo-Croatian many of the letters in words are silent, and in English words are mainly written as they sound. Today, after about seven years in the U.S., Kalinic said that she still has some difficulties.

For instance, it’s hard for her to understand assignments and higher-level vocabulary. Unlike Kalinic, Senior Kemuel Abreu knew a little English when he came to the U.S. just two months ago on July 27. He also studied French.

Abreu is a Native of Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. He is taking English 3-4, English 5-6, A.Z. /U.S. History, Math 5-6 and ELL (English Language Learners) classes. “ELL helps me very much because the teachers explain things to me that I don’t understand, and they help me strengthen my weaknesses,” Abreu said. “I feel comfortable in English 5-6 and math class, but not in history and English 3-4.” He said the only thing that keeps him from getting top grades is that it is hard for him to understand the directions of what assignments and tests are asking him to do.

Although he likes to speak English, when it comes to public speaking he mainly stays quiet, he said, because he is doesn’t want to mess up on pronunciation. Abreu hopes that in a year’s time he becomes as close to fluent as possible because he is a senior.

As an ELL teacher for 18 years Lisa Wakefield, knows a little something about learning English. According to Wakefield, over the years she has learned that reading is the most difficult for learners, making writing second and speaking the easiest.

“As they progress, the academic language in reading gets harder for them,” she said.

Wakefield said that she is “amazed” by the way students come to her class knowing nothing of English, and by Christmas they are able to carry on a conversation. Currently in her classes, she has six new students who just arrived to the U.S.: one from the Dominican Republic, two from Armenia and three from Mexico.

What she enjoys about teaching ELL is the growth of the students and knowing she played a role in their success to learn a second language. One of the other joys of her job is creating relationships with her students when they visit her on their own time.

High school is nothing compared to arriving to the U.S. at a college level, however, which is just what Spanish teacher Marcela Capistran did.

“First I went to a Catholic school in Atchison, Kansas,” Capistran said. While there, she and her sister enrolled in an “intense” summer program. Entering at a beginner’s level, they were considered to be at fluent in the end.

Capistran is from La Ciudad de Obregon, Sonora, Mexico. She came to the U.S. June of 1991. As a younger student she took English classes, but the result wasn’t enough to communicate. After the program, she attended the University of Arizona where she took ESL classes for one semester, and eventually was put in normal classes. “Writing formal papers was hard for me at first,” she said. “It was hard to communicate an idea in class.”

Even with challenges like writing essays and public speaking, she still had to keep her grades up.

“I had to put more effort in to my work. While everyone was putting in 100 percent, I had to put in 200 percent,” Capistran said. If she had been in Mexico, she wouldn’t have been frightened to participate in class like she was here, she said.

“I felt handicapped. I always had a disadvantage no matter what,” she said.

The one major difference between speaking English and Spanish is the pronunciation, Capistran said. “In Spanish there is only one sound per letter. What you see is what you say,” she said. “If someone pronounces one sound wrong in English, people get lost right away.”

Not only did Capistran go to college in a second language, she also teaches in a second language. Having a thick accent, she said, students often have problems understanding her at the beginning of the year.

“I know I have a weakness,” Capistran said. “I just have to work at it and speak as clearly as I can.”