Language and Literacy Autobiography
Below, is my language and literacy autobiography. In this document, I describe my personal history with literacy. I learned so much through the experience of writing this. I remembered elements of my upbringing that I hadn't necessarily tied to my literacy, but now that I have written it down, I am certain that it has contributed to my success in school. I believe that writing an autobiography like this would be a great practice for adult students learning English as a Second Language. Students are provided with the opportunity to remember their own learning and to really examine their early experiences and reflect upon them. This piece shows my ability to reflect on my own past experiences and to make connections between these experiences and my own success as a learner. In the future, I would like to use this format with my ESL students to examine their experiences as learners and readers to see how I could better understand their perspectives on learning.
My early experiences in my home, school and in the exceptional learning class shaped the language learner and teacher I am today. These experiences developed my personal philosophy of teaching: Learning a language should be fun and challenging, while avoiding frustration and building up complexity throughout the duration of the learning experience.
My sister, brother and I were all very lucky to have a mother and father who valued education and literacy. Each of us learned to read in the home prior to attending kindergarten and the way my mother brought our bedtime stories to life really set the pace for my love of language. Each night, Mom would read to us from chapter books. My earliest memories were of her reading the Little House on the Prairie series to us each night. These books had something that each of us enjoyed. My older sister enjoyed the story itself, while I, being around age 5, loved the parts about Laura’s mischief. My little brother loved the parts about Pa building the log cabin and grabbing his gun to chase away the dangers. My mother would always leave us on a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter, so that we would be compelled to pick the book up ourselves and read ahead the next morning. These elements promoted our interest in reading, provided some early literacy awareness and engaged us in education.
I entered kindergarten with the ability to read. Learning the ABCs and some early phonics was very boring to me. Shortly thereafter, I was placed into a “Resources for Expanded Learning” (REL) class and received the additional enrichment I craved there. It was fun, and I even began to learn some nouns in French. Before the third grade, my family moved to a neighboring town of only 1000 people. Needless to say, the REL program was very small. So small, in fact, that my sister and I were the only members from our school. We would see the REL teacher together when it was possible. Despite the limited resources of this school, I was provided with access to a computer that had language learning software. I studied some German, but that was abandoned in favor of extra math and reading and writing. Throughout my elementary years, I would not say that I achieved my potential at school, but at home with my mother. Trips to the library were frequent and she always had a book recommendation for me. I was introduced to John Steinbeck in the 4th grade. After reading Of Mice and Men, I was hooked. That led to my reading almost his entire catalog on my own and branching out to other classic novelists of the 20th century.
By junior high, the curriculum focused more on writing than reading. Tests across the subject matter required short answers to questions of comprehension, and in English, maintaining a topic in essay writing and vocabulary building was the focus. I continued to read many books on my own, and got my hands on the first Harry Potter book. This was a turning point in my literacy. I anticipated each book with such intensity, that I did not even realize or care that I was plowing through an 800 page book in two days at the age of 13 or 14. Prior to these books being released, I had only read perhaps a 300 or 400 page book. Larger books, like the Stephen King books my mom loves, intimidated me. After Harry Potter, I knew that the thickness of a book no longer mattered. I learned that content was more important to me than simply finishing a book in a week. I could now read whatever I wanted. At that stage I picked up J.R.R. Tolkein’s books, In Cold Blood, and a lengthy John Grisham novel, and read them all with relative ease.
In high school, I was exposed to more classic literature, and I began to learn my L2—Spanish. I had two very great English teachers who guided us through Shakespeare, Orwell, and Capote, and in writing, drilled strict prescriptive grammar rules. I memorized these rules with ease, and took them as gospel. In my junior year of high school, I was finally able to take a second language—Spanish. The pace of this class was quite slow. The focus was on present tense only, and the teacher seemed stuck in her rhythm and unwilling to branch out or speed up the pace of her teaching. Behavioral problems in this classroom were rampant and resulted in most students not learning much Spanish at all due to the disruption. Although this was a somewhat negative experience for me, my English teachers made me continue to love language and in college I decided to pursue Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as a double major.
I began college and took the amount of Mandarin that was taught at the school—2 years—and took classes in 2nd year Spanish. The Mandarin course was designed only for spoken Mandarin. I had no ability for reading characters, but could read pinyin. I obtained some proficiency, but when I transferred colleges, I decided to move my focus to solely Spanish. My first day at this new college was terrifying. I walked in to the classroom and the teacher began speaking in rapid (for my ear) Spanish. He handed us a syllabus—also completely in Spanish. He informed us that we would be learning poetry and reading short stories in Spanish. It took every ounce of willpower I had to stay in my seat and not run out of the room screaming. I was so scared I was going to be lost. I quickly learned, however, that I finally had a great Spanish teacher in my presence. I participated in class; I read the stories (and loved them); I even wrote five-page papers for this class. I had never written a composition in Spanish, and to just be “thrown to the sharks” was intense, but it was the challenge I had been looking for my entire educational career. I took over 40 credit hours of Spanish courses and got my degree in Spanish Language and Literature. I was fluent and considered myself to be a bilingual.
For graduate school, I decided to study Linguistics. I was more interested in the structure of languages around the world, than on the literature of the Spanish-speaking world. Literature has always remained a pastime of mine, but for my career, I wanted something with a more direct application of language to others. So, I worked through the coursework and learned about language and how it is learned. I completed a psychoacoustic study for my thesis and learned even more about the inner workings of the mind and the effect of language on our thought processes. Throughout the duration of my degree, I wanted to learn how to speak the languages I had been studying. Now that I knew about syntactic structure and articulatory phonetics, I felt that I could take on a new language with ease.
I continued to study Spanish on my own and even took an intensive year of Korean one summer on a whim. I quickly learned the Hangeul writing system and tried to learn all I could about the acoustic distinction of the stop consonants and the articulatory differences. I was trying to learn “like a linguist.” It has helped to a degree, but I have learned to relax a bit and have fun with the language. I try to listen to Korean music, and find people to speak Korean with and I watch dramas regularly to improve my listening. My L3 is still in development, but I feel like my prior experiences have shaped the type of learner I am. I know that I must continue to maintain and develop my language skills. I have begun building my vocabulary on my own, and am trying to learn more grammar through the internet and through my Korean teacher. It seems to be a much slower process than with Spanish. I attribute that to the fact that I am older, and that there are not nearly as many cognates to rely upon in Korean as there are in Spanish. There are some, but not enough that I could make guesses at words. Therefore, my study continues. I struggle more on my own than in a classroom setting, which is interesting to me. I always thought perhaps I could tailor my lessons to my own needs if I was working alone. I think that interaction with other learners and attention from a skilled teacher is perhaps more beneficial than many students of language realize.
My experiences have also shaped the way I teach. I know that I am a more engaged learner when I am interested in the material; therefore, I try very hard to find ways to make my lessons exciting. I pride myself in inventing metaphors to include in my lessons. I also try to allow the students freedom in choosing how I present material to them, and what the topic of their homework will be. I am much more lenient on my adult students, because I know that they are struggling against not only linguistic forces, but also cultural, maturational and social forces. And so I do what I can to engage them during the class, and I provide them with the tools to study at home.
Through this autobiography I have learned many things. I had never really thought about how I learned to read. I was so young, that the memories are foggy! It was interesting to call my mom and my sister to see what exactly we did at home and what I was like as a child reader. In writing of all of my education in language, it reminds me that although I have learned so much, I still have much to learn. This reflection has been a learning experience. It reminds me that learning a language can be scary and that my students need lots of care and attention. I want to do all that I can to make them feel at ease so that they may learn as much as possible from me. Facilitating their interactions in English and pushing them to succeed is something I need to refine and something that they need me to do for them. If they could do it on their own, they would not be in class, after all!
My sister, brother and I were all very lucky to have a mother and father who valued education and literacy. Each of us learned to read in the home prior to attending kindergarten and the way my mother brought our bedtime stories to life really set the pace for my love of language. Each night, Mom would read to us from chapter books. My earliest memories were of her reading the Little House on the Prairie series to us each night. These books had something that each of us enjoyed. My older sister enjoyed the story itself, while I, being around age 5, loved the parts about Laura’s mischief. My little brother loved the parts about Pa building the log cabin and grabbing his gun to chase away the dangers. My mother would always leave us on a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter, so that we would be compelled to pick the book up ourselves and read ahead the next morning. These elements promoted our interest in reading, provided some early literacy awareness and engaged us in education.
I entered kindergarten with the ability to read. Learning the ABCs and some early phonics was very boring to me. Shortly thereafter, I was placed into a “Resources for Expanded Learning” (REL) class and received the additional enrichment I craved there. It was fun, and I even began to learn some nouns in French. Before the third grade, my family moved to a neighboring town of only 1000 people. Needless to say, the REL program was very small. So small, in fact, that my sister and I were the only members from our school. We would see the REL teacher together when it was possible. Despite the limited resources of this school, I was provided with access to a computer that had language learning software. I studied some German, but that was abandoned in favor of extra math and reading and writing. Throughout my elementary years, I would not say that I achieved my potential at school, but at home with my mother. Trips to the library were frequent and she always had a book recommendation for me. I was introduced to John Steinbeck in the 4th grade. After reading Of Mice and Men, I was hooked. That led to my reading almost his entire catalog on my own and branching out to other classic novelists of the 20th century.
By junior high, the curriculum focused more on writing than reading. Tests across the subject matter required short answers to questions of comprehension, and in English, maintaining a topic in essay writing and vocabulary building was the focus. I continued to read many books on my own, and got my hands on the first Harry Potter book. This was a turning point in my literacy. I anticipated each book with such intensity, that I did not even realize or care that I was plowing through an 800 page book in two days at the age of 13 or 14. Prior to these books being released, I had only read perhaps a 300 or 400 page book. Larger books, like the Stephen King books my mom loves, intimidated me. After Harry Potter, I knew that the thickness of a book no longer mattered. I learned that content was more important to me than simply finishing a book in a week. I could now read whatever I wanted. At that stage I picked up J.R.R. Tolkein’s books, In Cold Blood, and a lengthy John Grisham novel, and read them all with relative ease.
In high school, I was exposed to more classic literature, and I began to learn my L2—Spanish. I had two very great English teachers who guided us through Shakespeare, Orwell, and Capote, and in writing, drilled strict prescriptive grammar rules. I memorized these rules with ease, and took them as gospel. In my junior year of high school, I was finally able to take a second language—Spanish. The pace of this class was quite slow. The focus was on present tense only, and the teacher seemed stuck in her rhythm and unwilling to branch out or speed up the pace of her teaching. Behavioral problems in this classroom were rampant and resulted in most students not learning much Spanish at all due to the disruption. Although this was a somewhat negative experience for me, my English teachers made me continue to love language and in college I decided to pursue Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as a double major.
I began college and took the amount of Mandarin that was taught at the school—2 years—and took classes in 2nd year Spanish. The Mandarin course was designed only for spoken Mandarin. I had no ability for reading characters, but could read pinyin. I obtained some proficiency, but when I transferred colleges, I decided to move my focus to solely Spanish. My first day at this new college was terrifying. I walked in to the classroom and the teacher began speaking in rapid (for my ear) Spanish. He handed us a syllabus—also completely in Spanish. He informed us that we would be learning poetry and reading short stories in Spanish. It took every ounce of willpower I had to stay in my seat and not run out of the room screaming. I was so scared I was going to be lost. I quickly learned, however, that I finally had a great Spanish teacher in my presence. I participated in class; I read the stories (and loved them); I even wrote five-page papers for this class. I had never written a composition in Spanish, and to just be “thrown to the sharks” was intense, but it was the challenge I had been looking for my entire educational career. I took over 40 credit hours of Spanish courses and got my degree in Spanish Language and Literature. I was fluent and considered myself to be a bilingual.
For graduate school, I decided to study Linguistics. I was more interested in the structure of languages around the world, than on the literature of the Spanish-speaking world. Literature has always remained a pastime of mine, but for my career, I wanted something with a more direct application of language to others. So, I worked through the coursework and learned about language and how it is learned. I completed a psychoacoustic study for my thesis and learned even more about the inner workings of the mind and the effect of language on our thought processes. Throughout the duration of my degree, I wanted to learn how to speak the languages I had been studying. Now that I knew about syntactic structure and articulatory phonetics, I felt that I could take on a new language with ease.
I continued to study Spanish on my own and even took an intensive year of Korean one summer on a whim. I quickly learned the Hangeul writing system and tried to learn all I could about the acoustic distinction of the stop consonants and the articulatory differences. I was trying to learn “like a linguist.” It has helped to a degree, but I have learned to relax a bit and have fun with the language. I try to listen to Korean music, and find people to speak Korean with and I watch dramas regularly to improve my listening. My L3 is still in development, but I feel like my prior experiences have shaped the type of learner I am. I know that I must continue to maintain and develop my language skills. I have begun building my vocabulary on my own, and am trying to learn more grammar through the internet and through my Korean teacher. It seems to be a much slower process than with Spanish. I attribute that to the fact that I am older, and that there are not nearly as many cognates to rely upon in Korean as there are in Spanish. There are some, but not enough that I could make guesses at words. Therefore, my study continues. I struggle more on my own than in a classroom setting, which is interesting to me. I always thought perhaps I could tailor my lessons to my own needs if I was working alone. I think that interaction with other learners and attention from a skilled teacher is perhaps more beneficial than many students of language realize.
My experiences have also shaped the way I teach. I know that I am a more engaged learner when I am interested in the material; therefore, I try very hard to find ways to make my lessons exciting. I pride myself in inventing metaphors to include in my lessons. I also try to allow the students freedom in choosing how I present material to them, and what the topic of their homework will be. I am much more lenient on my adult students, because I know that they are struggling against not only linguistic forces, but also cultural, maturational and social forces. And so I do what I can to engage them during the class, and I provide them with the tools to study at home.
Through this autobiography I have learned many things. I had never really thought about how I learned to read. I was so young, that the memories are foggy! It was interesting to call my mom and my sister to see what exactly we did at home and what I was like as a child reader. In writing of all of my education in language, it reminds me that although I have learned so much, I still have much to learn. This reflection has been a learning experience. It reminds me that learning a language can be scary and that my students need lots of care and attention. I want to do all that I can to make them feel at ease so that they may learn as much as possible from me. Facilitating their interactions in English and pushing them to succeed is something I need to refine and something that they need me to do for them. If they could do it on their own, they would not be in class, after all!