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In my Language and Literacy Narrative Project my audience was towards people who grew up learning two languages and the struggle with balancing both. My project could also be towards first generation children learning a new language not spoken at all at home. I used ethos to appeal to my audience in using my experience and going into details to make it as visual as possible, that is also the most meaningful insight I learned in this phase one. I was so used to writing dull sentences that get straight to the point. With this paper I got to break down sentences and challenge myself to make them more descriptive and visual. The concept of writing for an audience most impacted my writing practices. When I got to my conclusion paragraph, thinking about who my audience might be, really helped brings my thoughts in and relate them to others. Also writing for an audience gave me a purpose and kept me focused to get my point across.
This assignment helped me develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing“. During our in-class workshops I got great feedback from my peers that helped me better my writing and even gave me ideas to expand on my work. We revised our papers, I took their advice and even gave them some too. With their advice I got to fix my paper and I got a different perspective to ways I could develop it in a way I could see myself. It was difficult at first for me to give them feedback because I did not want to offend anyone or make them feel like their work wasn’t good, but everyone was so understanding.
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My family like many others in America immigrated from another country, meaning my parents’ first language is not English. Growing up my first language was Spanish and the most exposure to English I got in my toddler years was through Dora the Explorer. I assume since I did not know how to speak English I just was not interested in the shows. Yet funny enough I understood some of it, I just did not care to put much mind into speaking it. My toddler self was more interested in playing with my toys, having snacks, and taking naps and had the show playing as background music. Until one day, my cousin had come back from school and I was in another room, but I could hear everything she was saying. She sounded beyond excited and me being nosey, I tippy toed to the kitchen trying not to be noticed but the hard wood cracks were blowing my cover. I peeped into the kitchen to see what she was talking about. Apparently, that day her teacher was going over colors and she was telling my mom about it. I overheard some of the colors she mentioned but the one that stuck out to me was orange. I tipped toed back over to my room and stood in front of the mirror that was covered in fingerprints and worn off stickers mouthing what I heard. I could not get it right the first few times. I tried breaking up the word but the most I could get out was “o-o-or”. I was there standing in front of my mirror hands pressed against it making funny faces trying to figure it out. After a few tries I finally whispered “orange” as if it were a secret and ran into the kitchen to tell my mom…..
Soon after that I was starting kindergarten and my next challenge was to learn how to write in English. My mom would buy me the tracing books with the worm on the bottom line, a car in the middle-dashed line and an airplane on top. She would make me practice for at least an hour every day; I know this because she would sit me right next to her while she watched her TV soaps. I found this to be completely unfair and tedious, but I was not to mess with my mom when it came to her Latin shows. I would sit on the carpet floor rewriting my name, letters, and words over and over again with a thick yellow number two pencil that would leave a sore red bump on my ring finger. I did not see the point in why she would make me practice for so long when all I wanted to do was anything but that. I struggled to write and get a hold of the pencil, it seemed three times bigger than my tiny five-year-old hand. My favorite word to write was dog, it was so simple, and it was one of the first words I learned to write. I would constantly get praised by my teacher with stickers and compliments for my handwriting and it motivated me to keep wanting to do better, soon I found it easy to write and enjoyed learning new words.
These were very important moments for me growing up. My first word in English is the only memory I can remember vividly, and it reminds how I first started learning English and how I struggled with it at first. With my writing having my mom to make me practice and the constant praise helped me want to keep on writing and not find it to be so tedious like I did before. These were the building blocks that lead me to where I am today. It was very helpful knowing English and Spanish, for me and my family. I was able to translate papers and translate in person or ask questions that my family members couldn’t because of the language barrier. I was able to help teach my mom a bit of English too, so she could express herself when I am not around to help her. I get to enjoy more music, movies and books from both languages.
However, with knowing two languages I was starting to mix the together causing me to speak Spanglish. Speaking improper Spanish made me very self-conscious, even till this day I catch myself and do my best to correct it. At first, I made a lot of grammatical mistakes in Spanish since I would mostly speak English with the people around me. I would say things like “No sabo” instead of “No se” and my mom’s friends would point it out, making me insecure to speak in Spanish. In middle school I realized I wasn’t the only one having this issue. Many of my Spanish speaking friends were also making the same mistakes as me and I found comfort in that. My story is like many to those whose parents also immigrated to this country trying to balance out two languages.
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