Zia's Story

“I’m not good on the phone, I don’t know about email. I’m so slow.

Usually, I come for grammar. I speak English not too bad, but reading and writing is very poor.

I love the place here [the library]. It’s a very nice place. And the people too are very nice. And you come here and feel very comfortable. The people want you to come here, they try to help you and it’s very good.

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I started to learn a couple of years ago because I thought it’s better that I try. You know, I’m not going to lose anything.

Because I have young children, they say “Daddy, can you help us?”, and when you can’t help them it’s very sad because they don’t understand.

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Learning...it’s not something small. It’s very big. You will always learn more things... It’s never enough.

I wish so much that I started when I was young. I came here [to Australia] in 1981, I went straight to work because at that time they needed workers. They didn’t need people to learn.

You can learn quick when you’re young. When you’re old it’s very hard to learn. You can’t pick up anything so quick like the young generation.

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When you want to learn... you can learn if you want. If you love to learn you could. If you don’t want it you can’t learn.

Me? I love to learn. But my brain is very slow to pick up things.

I love to come here [to the library].

I hassle them [the library workers] and say “When’s the next class?”

I’m still learning. I want to do other things, they’re not going to get rid of me so easily!

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But, it’s slowly, slowly.”