Literacy Narrative - James Leung

James Leung

ENG 11000-B - Freshman Composition Section 42187

2/18/15

An Outsider Among Friends

            Only now as a college freshman, I have decided on learning Chinese.  Although the first language I ever spoke was Cantonese, the only language I became fluent in was English.  Most Chinese American friends I had grew up learning both Chinese and English, but at a young age I rejected Chinese.  As I got older, I was given more and more reasons why to know solely English. I was pretty good at English in school and had no struggles learning it. It wasn't until around my senior year of high school, that I gained the desire to learn Chinese myself.

            I lived in two households during my childhood, in my grandparents' large home in Staten Island and in my parents' cramped apartment in Chinatown.  I was around four years old, and I loved it whenever my mom popped in VHS tapes of Chinese cartoons for me to watch.  Through watching these tapes all the time I slowly learned basic phrases of Chinese. However, the limited amount of tapes we had bored me and I stopped watching them. That was when my mom began to buy American VHS tapes for me, causing me to fall in love with Blue's Clues, Power Rangers, and Digimon.  Religiously after Pre-K class, I would go home and watch as much as a I could of the new tapes my mom got me.  Quickly my English became far superior to my ability to speak Chinese.

            It was kindergarten when I began distancing myself from Chinese completely.  I remember I was talking to my tablemates one day as our teacher went around to check everyone's homework.  The room was filled with kids laughing until our teacher arrived at a kid that didn't do his homework.  All the kids noticed and the room entered a dead silence.  After our teacher asked why, with all eyes on him, he replied that his parents told him to do his Chinese school homework instead.   Sternly our teacher told him that regular school came first to Chinese school.  While this message was directed to him, at the time I felt that message was directed to all of us as well.  Later at home, I told my mom about what happened and, wanting the best for my education, she explained further why regular school was more important than Chinese school. That day instilled the idea into my head that compared to English, Chinese was obsolete and I would be better off not learning it.  Thereafter whenever my grandparents nagged me about enrolling into Chinese school, I refused for I had rejected Chinese from my life.

            I went through the rest of elementary school and middle school with the belief that Chinese was useless, but during high school my beliefs started to changed.  Freshman year of high school I was given the choice of taking Chinese or Spanish for my language class.  Since I despised Spanish with a passion in middle school, the obvious choice was Chinese.  However, according to the school, freshmen could not take both geometry and Chinese, so I had to choose between those two.  Due to me wanting to be ahead in my math courses, I chose geometry and ended up taking Spanish.  While it was easy for me to pick geometry, I did get somewhat of a rebellious attitude towards the school practically forcing me to drop Chinese.  Later in my junior year I heard that the school changed their policy and now allowed Chinese and geometry to be taken simultaneously which frustrated me deeply.  This frustration was a small spark to my gain of interest in Chinese.  I began to get the idea in my head of "Why can't I?", but never acted on it in high school.

            What catapulted my desire to learn Chinese was the alienation I felt being among my friends who all spoke fluent Chinese.  From junior to senior year, the amount of Chinese friends that I had and the time that I spent with them grew.  Every moment I spent with them I loved, except for those moments that displayed me as the only one who was illiterate in Chinese.  There would be times when some of my friends would say jokes with a Chinese phrase or even the entire joke would be in Chinese and I would be the only one not laughing.  Not laughing because I had no idea what was said.  My rejection of the Chinese language was no more and instead I desired to learn it.  The most embarrassing showcasing of my ignorance happened in January of this year. Six of my friends, all being fluent in Chinese, came over to my apartment to hang out.  It was really cramped inside my living room but we were glad not to be outside with the torrential rain.  After playing the party game Werewolves with each other for hours, eventually we got hungry and wanted to order Chinese food.  Since it was my house my friends made me make the order.  The problem was the person on the other side of the phone only spoke Chinese.  Flustered, I asked the man on the phone to repeat what he said but in English.  Again came the same words I could not understand.  Embarrassingly I handed the phone to one of my friends and had him make the order.

            Throughout most my life I considered Chinese to be useless but I, lacking the ability to speak Chinese, ended up being useless.  The feeling of  having no clue what your friends or the people around are saying, really got to me that day in January.  I felt like a kid excluded from a special club or brotherhood just because I did not know the language that most the people in my lives did.  That is why recently I decided to take up Chinese this summer and hopefully learn what I had neglected since childhood.  Learning Chinese will be really difficult since I'm doing it late and on my own.  To do so I will be using language teaching programs, watching Chinese television shows, and attempt to talk to friends or family members in Chinese.  This process will help me with my major too, because computer science has many coding languages that I will need to learn.  I've never had to gone through the challenges of learning an unknown language, so the experience I gain through the process of learning Chinese will be very helpful.

            After successfully being able to coherently speak and understand Chinese I will be able to communicate with relatives better instead of the "Chinglish" I use with them now. Normally a conversation with my grandparents lasts a long and awkward five minutes, but acquiring Chinese will change that completely and better my relationship with them.  My relationship with them is not bad by any means but could be improved vastly. Once I get through the struggle of learning Chinese, the struggle of communicating with family members will be gone as well.  Lastly, the cold sense of exclusion from my friends that urged me to learn Chinese, will also cease to exist.