Orlando Sanchez
2/18/15
English 11000-B
Bi-lingual Literacy
Although
I am Bi-lingual and can read, write and speak both languages at the same level,
I consider English to be my primary language. How I acquired my literacy in
English is not as interesting as I acquired by literacy in Spanish. Spanish was
much more difficult to grasp than English. Both of my parents are American born
and spoke English almost exclusively throughout my childhood. My basic
knowledge of the language then grew tenfold when I started attending school.
Although not my favorite subject, I always did just fine in English class and
always read at a reading level which was considered slightly above average. I
never cared much for writing at all, to me it is associated with school and
more specifically homework, which is something I do not enjoy. However, I do
enjoy reading. During my childhood my reading consisted of comic books and of
course any assigned novels from school. As I grew older I began to enjoy
reading books on Philosophy as well as Autobiographies from any people I
admired or found interesting. As I said before, I do not find my acquisition
English to be anything out of the ordinary. I find that I grew older and
progressed through the stages of life and school, my understanding and command
of the English language grew and still continues to grow as I entered college.
On the other hand, Spanish was not
an easy language for me to learn when compared to English. Unlike English,
Spanish was not spoken around me very often and it wasn’t until I reached
Middle School that the curriculum began to include learning a second language.
I learned the bulk of my Spanish from my grandparents. During my childhood, my
grandparents would care for me while my parents were at work and they made it a
point to teach my siblings and I Spanish. My grandparents were also American
born and they were able to speak English fluently, however they felt it was
important for the newer generation of our family to maintain our cultural roots
and speak the language of our ancestors. I don’t exactly why they felt this but
it struck a chord with me and this idealism is what led me to pursue literacy
in Spanish.
Through my grandparents, I was able
to grasp an initial understanding of the language, but even so I would only use
it with them and never spoke it in public. This holds true even today, I am
able to understand and speak the language fluently but I just find it easier to
communicate in English. If I am spoken to in Spanish, I have a habit of
responding in English anyways. I'm not sure why I do this, I've heard about
people who are able to "think" or "dream" in more than one
language, but that has never applied to me. When I am speaking Spanish my
thoughts are completely in English and this creates a task where I need to
translate my thoughts into words. However, I feel this little obstacle has
helped me develop my literacy in both languages. While learning Spanish, I
understood what was taught my translating it into English first, which was
where I could truly grasp what was being taught to me. Likewise, my
understanding of English and my vocabulary also grew because being two distinct
languages, words don’t always translate easily. For example a simple word to
translate from English would be "Religious" into the Spanish
"Religioso", most of the letters remain the same with the exception
of a few additions. A difficult word to translate would be the English word
"Assist" which would translate into the Spanish "Ayudar". A
common mistake would be to mistranslate "Assist" which means to help,
into the Spanish word "Asistir" which means to attend, based off of
their similarities. Misconceptions like these forced me to expand my vocabulary
in both languages in order to bridge the many gaps between the two. As stated before, I enjoy reading
and knowing two languages opened a lot of doors for me when it comes to
literature. With my acquisition of literacy in Spanish, I was now able to read
and comprehend a multitude of new works of literature I would've otherwise not
known of.
Through my experience of learning
Spanish, I was able to feel some of the struggles that people might experience
when they are learning English. It is hard to grasp a language when it is not
native to you or when it is not spoken regularly. However, to me learning a
second language only reinforced my literacy skills overall. Unlike English
which came to me kind of naturally, Spanish forced me to practice my reading
and writing skills, both for schoolwork and my own personal reasons.
I felt that writing the literacy narrative was a bit more difficult than other papers I’ve had to write in the past. I am usually better at writing research papers or papers that respond to an article than I am at writing about personal experiences. However through this assignment, I learned that it is important to be able to write about yourself. Writing about personal experiences helps you grow not only as a writer but as a person since you are allowing others to see a portion of your life. The main challenge I had with this assignment was fleshing out a specific incident that motivated me to acquire my literacy. Overall, I feel there is indeed value in writing a literacy narrative because it presents a chance for a person to talk about a significant achievement in their life, which is the acquisition of language.
ReplyDeleteI read you story and it is a good one. The only things i can notice . in the first part of the text you show Spanish as a difficult language.then in the last part of the text you mentioned ( Unlike English which came to me kind of naturally, Spanish forced me to practice my reading and writing skills, both for schoolwork and my own personal reasons). Did you never practice your English reading and writing skill. Or are you telling us you better at Spanish than English
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your narrative. I think learning a second language when you're older is definitely a challenge. However, I was a bit confused because you mentioned that spanish was not spoken often around you but then you also said that your grandparents cared for you and siblings and they spoke spanish and taught you as well as your siblings spanish.
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