How I Turned Language Arts from a Weakness into a Strength by Yuanzhe

How I Turned Language Arts from a Weakness into a Strength by Yuanzhe - July 2026 Scholarship Essay

When I was growing up, the most challenging class that I struggled a lot with was language arts. It wasn’t that I was bad at the way that they taught me that made it challenging. I had a hard time understanding figurative language. I would read stories but would struggle to understand the deeper meaning of what the author was trying to say to me. This was the problem that plagued me whenever I took language arts. It was a massive uphill battle that I had to deal with every day. I remembered how I tried to get what the teachers were trying to say to me, but it just didn’t work. I did everything I could to understand the topic myself, but the discussion was a difficulty. This was a constant back and forth battle the really plagued me whenever I read stories.

The only reason why I was able to get a good grade was because I just did what was the most basic and just tried to understand what the teacher was trying to say to me. I remember in class how the teachers would try to give us a lecture on what the subject was about and how to understand literary devices. Even though this helped, I couldn’t understand what the teacher was trying to say to me. However, looking back I feel that the reason why I struggled was because they taught it in a way that prevented you from enjoying the book. I do understand that you can use other sources, but SparkNotes and other websites are just their interpretations of the book. But what made me critical thinking good was when I moved to an alternative school.

I realized that part of the reason why I was struggling to do well was because I had mental health problems that prevented me from focusing on my schoolwork. When I got treatment that allowed me to focus on my mental health and allowed me to think positively, that’s when I started to be a better reader. I started to check out books from the library and I did everything I could to grasp the deeper message of those books. From reading these books, I tried to understand what the author was saying and how to better emphasize what’s going on. This allowed me to focus on the story and get better overall as a reader. I was able to grasp the main ideas and themes that I found from reading these books and I became a great thinker.

This has helped me because whenever I go to college, I read what the professor has given me, and I try to understand what the passage is trying to tell me. This is what has allowed me to look at the text of the book and better elaborate on what the author is trying to teach me. I have grown as a reader, and I feel that I can go further in my reading journey. The other thing that matters is that I can better understand what the reading is. It’s not just that I read the passage and take it in rather I think broadly about the passage that is at hand. This is how I have grown as a reader by being able to be patient with language arts. At the same time, I look at things that I read from my past and I try to elaborate on them. I look at what I was taught, and I rethink what was right and what was incorrect. The point is that you can’t always take the information that you were taught in public schools and run with it. Instead, you run to re-read it and think about it and figure out if it was true or myth.