"Your Child doesn't have the ability to speak English!" (PART 2)

My journey From being rejected due to broken English to becoming an International English instructor and communication trainer.

To read the first part, click here 👈

The year was 2008. Internet use was slowly spreading. Social media was just beginning to take root. YouTube was just created 3 years ago. It’s seed just sprouted and was budding into a small little plant. Almost all the giant tech companies of today that rule the online world were just beginning to take their baby steps.

As the internet grew, My access to information grew too. My Elder brother, Hadi Rashad, Was an avid debater. He memorized the Holy Quran at a young age and was a brilliant young guy collecting information through internet by watching lectures and seminars. (As of the date of this writing, 2022, He graduated in usool al hadeeth from Madinah university as one of the top scorers of his batch and was one of the few students selected from across the globe to pursue Masters studies there). I used to observe what he did astonishingly. How amazing is this technology that could serve to us in silver spoons any information we demanded. Subhanallah! It was absolutely amazing.

I too followed his footsteps watching seminars, speeches and debates from the speakers from the US and the UK.

💠 Life lesson 5 - The best way to get your children excel, is to be excellent your self. Children don’t listen, they just observe and imitate. So be a good role model for them worth imitating and modeling💠

Internet was very intriguing. I spent my after school hours taking notes and listening to speakers. Pages after pages, books after books, My love for learning increased. Hyde park speakers corner debates were a craze for me. Binge watching Ahmed deedat lectures was the hobby of choice. Following Malcolm X’s thunderous speech was an addiction. Nothing quenched my thirst than listening to debates and discussions on very stimulating subjects ranging from the US foreign policy to the counter argumentation on liberal propaganda. It gave me life.

Little did i know, My language was developing at a phenomenal pace. By the time i reached 5th standard, my public speaking ability was getting recognized by my classmates. But it was far from perfect. Filled with grammar mistakes. An ugly mixture of all foreign accents creating a cacophony of accentuation, intonation and frequencies. I had friends from different parts of the world. I could speak in most of their accents. While calling to Mcdonald’s to order food, I would speak in the iconic Filipino accent. While fighting with myArab friends over football match fouls, I would speak in the rough Arab accent. While conversing with my north Indian friends, i could speak in a distinct Indian accent with all it’s heterogeneous syllables. So my usual language was a mixture of all.

But nonetheless, it was a huge improvement compared to my situation years before. I continued listening to speeches and collecting notes on various subjects. I had never pursued this for the sake of improving my language. It was solely for seeking knowledge and expanding my horizons. But this exercise gave me a good set of vocabulary and flow of words. Alhamdulillah.

Madrasa life gave me opportunities to excel in speaking as well. Speech competitions were always my field of excelling. It was a craze for me. I tried to grab all opportunities to take part in elocution competitions and my mother made sure i participated. Madrasa annual fest was like the crop irrigation day. Seeing my mother’s smile as she looked at me and my brother coming home with bags filled with prizes was and is a priceless memory that i hold close to my heart. Subhanallah! Such good times. The amount of support i got from my ustadhs were phenomenal. Being in this environment helped me overcome the inferiority complex that had haunted me for long years.

💠 Life lesson 6 - The best way to heal a broken soul is to open for him doors to a healthy environment. An environment of appreciation, support and love. Step by step, he will heal. One foot at a time, he will grow and sooner or later, you will see him flying high conquering horizons. 💠

All those times in school that i underwent challenges and problems, I hid it from my family quiet successfully, smiling even though my heart was weeping. Even though i had a very open environment in home to talk to both of my parents. I still didn’t because i didn’t feel the need to. and also, at that time, it seemed like a very unmanly thing to do to whine and complain. So i kept my mouth shut. This mentality, which i discovered was partially wrong, might have been the result of growing up in a home of five boys.

Coming home was something i always looked forward to. to be with my brothers, to play with them, fight with them, and study with them. it was my safe haven. The amount of support and appreciation i got from my Mother and father would erase all the deep held pain in no time. To have that kind of a support from home might have been the core reason why i was able to endure in circumstances that should have left deep cuts on my mind. The love and care received from Umma (Mother) and Uppa (father) played a phenomenal role in my growth.

💠 Life lesson 7 - To be a good parent, means to be your child’s support system. To be his/her pillar that he/she can rely upon. So always make home a place your children look forward to return to. Don’t make it a jail with martial regulations. Make it a safe haven they find peace in. Even if everything is going bad in their external environment, they will still be able to find balance in life due to the internal environment of their homes.💠

Watching international speakers for hours and hours, day and night, gave a me good sense of how to speak publicly. It was not a conscious choice i made solely to master public speaking, but rather, it was just my curiosity to search and research following the footsteps of my grandfather who is a scholar and an avid reader. I was merely imitating what i had seen my grandfather do. I never did any of these with the intention of improving my speaking ability, but the ability to openly communicate was a direct result of it. I was unknowingly following the LSRW methodology.

I never chose to do it. But my circumstances made me walk through it step by step. Now, as i look back, i feel it was not an unguided process, but rather a divinely guided one even though i was completely unaware. I consider it an answered Dua of an 8 year old kid who raised his little hands to the lord of the worlds weeping in pain, and ventilating his anxiety he couldn’t express in his little vocabulary.

💠 Life lesson 8 - There will come times in life when there doesn’t seem to be a clear path ahead. But don’t stop. keep walking with tawakkul even if it doesn’t make much sense to you. Keep on making dua. Verily, your lord is always with you. Sooner or later you will reach the destination. Then, when you look back, you will see the fog lifted and how you were guided.💠

The habit of listening to English, Reading as many books as possible and collecting new information continued for the next upcoming years. At that time, i would have never imagined that the language abilities i developed then would serve as the foundation for almost everything i would achieve in the future with the grace of God.

I continued participating in speaking competitions, Many of which i failed. A lot of such disastrous failures taught me lessons that would save me in the future. But i couldn’t see any huge improvement, until i came back to kerala to pursue higher secondary education. Joined for Biomaths in EMEA HSS.

There i found something i didn’t often receive from my earlier schools. Constant appreciation and support. Even the mistakes i made during my speeches were returned with gracious words of support. I represented the school in all zonal and district level elocution competitions.

My English teacher, Salam Sir would allot 10 minutes of his class everyday by assigning for me daily topics to give a speech on. He would take me to different classes in the school to give speeches on different topics. The response from the students were sensational and helped me a lot in building up my confidence. The most common of which was Martin Luther king’s speech titled ‘I have a dream’, which i had memorized word by word. I spent weeks, committing it to memory and watching the speech video over and over again to imitate the great speaker. School life contributed a lot to my language abilities. The appreciation i received motivated me a lot to keep striving, practicing and training.

💠 Life lesson 9 - To appreciate a person might just take 10 seconds for you. But those few words you uttered might be the reason for that person’s 10 years of growth. So, Always be charitable with your words. 💠

Joining college was a game changer in my life. I actively participated in inter college debates and discussions. Headed organizations and participated in campaigns, all of which opened for me venues to share my thoughts and ideas. Represented the college in competitions held across the country. It was a phenomenal experience! Subhanallah.

In campus life, I have had the opportunity to speak in almost all the 54 first year, second year, third year and PG classes of all the 18 departments of the college as the ambassador of NPTEL. I got to speak at RISC being it’s cordinator, got to engage directly with higher authority meetings through CLAN being it’s chairman, participated in elocution competitions through NSS, talk directly with patients through Palliative and convene with students through SISE being it’s president. Alhamdulillah. Opportunities after opportunities. With the help of Allah, I gave talks for English language classes, Conducted orientation sessions for freshers, gave speeches in political campaigns, handled anti-ragging awareness programs,etc.. Alhamdulillah summa Alhamdulillah.

The reason i chose to mention here about these opportunities and credentials, even though it might superficially seem egotistic to some who wish to judge, is to prove to you that the present state of my language ability was not a coincidence or a born talent. Years of constant work went into it. These opportunities didn’t come knocking on my door, i had to go and pursue it. I had to get out of my comfort zone. I could have chosen to just sit in the class focusing just on academics, as many teachers ignorantly claimed that all other activities are a waste and the only thing that would mater is your marks. But if i did that, i wouldn’t be here writing this. So, if you want to grow, You need to get out of your comfort zones!

💠 Life lesson 10 - Opportunities won’t come knocking on your door. You will need to go out and hunt them. To do that, You need to come out of you comfort zones. The day you come out of your safe zones is the day you take the first step towards development💠

It has been a long journey. I forced myself to come out of all my comfort zones. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. Each step i took, my mind responded with 101 excuses to take the step back. It was a very scary thing to do. It almost felt like jumping into the Mariana trench without knowing how to swim. Each time i held back due to fear of under-performing, there was this image of an 8 year old who wouldn’t be proud of seeing his elder self holding back due to fear. I made sure to grab all the opportunities that came across me.

You've got to grab every opportunity that comes up.

- Dominic West

Coming to Farook college, I found it extremely hard to speak. One of the reason being that my Malayalam proficiency was very low due to spending a lot of years developing my English proficiency. Hence, I had to resort to the English language to speak. I was insulted a lot for speaking English. This was quiet ironic considering the fact that i was earlier insulted for not being able to speak English. It then became clear to me that there are always going to be people who will demotivate you regardless of whatever you do.

💠 Life lesson 11 - You will always be criticized regardless of whatever you do. If you are not being opposed, that means you haven’t come out of your comfort zones. All steps towards development will be filled with name-calling, sarcastic comments, insults and outright oppositions. Don’t give them more attention than they deserve. Keep moving!💠

The first years of college life where especially filled with criticisms and oppositions. When I started speaking in English, I had to listen to a lot of derogatory and insulting comments like - ‘he is a sayip’ (A derogatory term used to denote a person acting like a Caucasian for the sake of attention) , ‘he is a show off’ , he is this and that. I don’t know if it’s due to the post-colonial inferiority complex of a Malayali or not. May Allah forgive them for the pain they caused and unite us all in jannah.

One thing became clear to me, if I choose to stop speaking due to the insults, I am only limiting my abilities and destroying what Allah gave me.

I continued speaking and improving communication efficiency. Read books and literature related to language and linguistics. Kept on training and practicing. Grabbed opportunities that came across my way even when I felt strongly that I could never achieve it. And now Alhamdulillah, Looking back, I feel extremely happy that I chose to do that. It was a long and hard journey, but in the end, it was all worth it. Alhamdulillah.

All human beings have fear. It all arises from deep dysfunctional and destructive beliefs about ourselves and the world in our minds. The only way to overcome these fears is by challenging them straight ahead. There will always be people who exploit your fears to insult you. But never ever stop doing what you are doing. Go forward with greater confidence.

The ones who insulted me looked with regret as Allah opened for me doors to job opportunities even before finishing my degree education. I joined as a trainer for a language institute based in UK, Got selected as an English presenter for Media One and started working as a journalist for Renai TV along with working as a certified professional consultant.

Looking back, All i can say now is ‘Alhamdulillah’. Everything i ever achieved was only due to the support of my lord. I strongly beleive it’s an answered Dua.

The journey was long. A lot of mistakes committed. A lot of lessons learned. And a lot of experiences made.

This story is a proof that If an average boy like me from a corner of the world that’s often overlooked, who couldn’t utter a single word of English, become an English Language instructor and media presenter, then you can do it too!

It is a proof, that if that average little kid who hated English to the core could one day lead English clubs and represent his college for English elocution competitions, then you can do it too!

Never ever back down! Never ever stop learning! Regardless of how hard it seems! Regardless of how impossible it seems! Continue the journey, even if it’s in a slow pace, never stop. The day you fall into the traps of your insecurities and lay back from travelling on this path, is the day you truly lose!

Do your best and God will do the rest

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An Update: After having worked in multiple language institutes, i feel that many of them are very ineffective, just money oriented and are built on outdated syllabuses which are highly ineffective. I am soon planning to start an English learning institute with a structure that is completely unique and build on the frameworks of linguistic psychology, making the process of learning fun and edutaining. The syllabus will be highly personalized to meet the day to day language demands of the student. I have taught students from India, Oman, south Africa, Eritrea, Bangladesh, France and Egypt. The kind of challenges they faced were quiet unique and specific to their situations. This is one of the core reasons why i believe a general textbook taught to all students across the board is highly ineffective and wastes the time of the student.

The new syllabus that i am developing will take time to complete. But once completed, i am confident that it’s going to be the door for many towards having a highly advanced communication skill and verbal ability.