Leslie.
Like I stated previously, communication is one of the most important components to life, and after moving across the Atlantic ocean I lost that component and could not communicate outside of my family for the most part. Being the talkative being I was, and still am, being silenced due to the language barrier was extremely hard, not being able to communicate with the outside world and socialize was very aggravating at the time. The beginning of the move was the hardest time and I remember always feeling self conscious or scared in public because I never knew what to say. Not being able to just go outside and make friends really affected me as a kid, but it was also a motivator for learning the English language.
Since my parents were English speaking, they helped me a lot while I was learning English. My dad actually unintentionally found another teaching method for me, music. Music was one of the biggest influences when it came to me learning. My dad always surrounded me with the music of his age like old school Hip Hop, R&B, and soulful sounds of his youth. The beats of the songs would capture me and then I would get lost in singing along, or at least trying to sing along. I would sing along, but since I was so young and new to the language I didn't understand what was coming out of my mouth, and that really bothered me so it motivated me more than ever to learn new words every day. Music, in my opinion, is one of the most effective forms of teaching, obviously besides formal teaching, and it really did help speed up the learning and understanding process. To get some real life examples of how the English language was used I watched a lot of television. TV is usually the center of every kid's life and it was definitely the center of mine. I spent hours watching movies and listening to how the characters talked and analyzing the rhetoric of the scripts, which I would look up after the movies and read, just to try and imitate their conversations and be like them.