Introduction

Hello, my name is Ricardo Soler, i'm 16 years old and i'm from Colombia. Some of my interests include playing numerous sports such as football in ADYFC, swimming for the school team and occasionally badminton. I also like watching T.V series and also learning about the environment with subjects such as Geography, Biology and Environmental Systems and Societies. I care about improving myself physically by doing sports and weightlifting and expanding my knowledge on my interests. Some of my goals for this year, academically, would be passing all subjects with a minimum score of 5 and improve my time management skills so I don't leave assessments to the last minute, which would be pretty troublesome in Grade 11/12.

Language has a very important role in my life as it is how I communicate everyday with different people, like my family in Spanish and school (and pretty much everywhere else) in English. Also the ability of being bilingual, specially in these 2 very commonly spoken languages in the world, can be very benefiting, like in getting a job and just moving around the world with very few language barriers. It is very important to study language because it will not only improve my reading and writing skills but also my overall communication skills, so things like presenting in front of people, persuading and informing them on certain subjects can be result to be quite profiting in the long run, specially when it comes to getting a job.

I have previously felt excluded due to language barriers multiple times in my life, primarily with me just starting to learn English in my first international school. Even though I understood some of the things that were said to me and around me, I couldn't communicate with anyone therefore not being able to make many friends. Some other language barriers that I have faced would be in these past few years were I have only spoken English except for some words in my house that when I went back to Colombia to visit my old friends and family and couldn't understand some of their slang and vocabulary that my parents and everyone else were raised with, therefore creating some minor awkward moments when you have to ask your friends what they meant with whatever they said.