Literacy Narrative: English Is Not My First Language
W1T Literacy Narrative Draft 1
English is not my first language. In fact, I didn’t learn it well enough to have a conversation until I was about 10 years old. I remember the embarrassment of being new to a country I called home after living in Mexico for years. Things changed quickly the first day of 8th grade. I remember being energetically greeted by a slender athletic man in his fifties in a muggy summer morning. The hum of the air conditioning as welcome sound as we found our seats in this room that smelled of being closed the last few months. His name was Mr. Goodman and he was, by most accounts, an “asshole.” This was a descriptor of which he was proud. Even the other faculty thought so. He was a strange man, but he had his reasons. Surprisingly, he was also one of the best teacher’s I’ve encountered to this day. He had a brutally visceral way of making you care about learning. His class would soon change the way I spoke English for the rest of my life.
Towards the end of the first month …show more content…
The days following that day all I could think was “Who did he think we was to talk to someone he didn’t know like that. To tell me I’d end up working there just like that. Over time however I began to grasp English concepts better and better. Conversational grammar became a fascination. Pretty soon I was getting really good at telling stories in English as I could in Spanish at the time, but there was still something wrong. It wasn’t the order of my words but their sound.
The more I focused on my accent, the more I hated the way it sounded. Deep down in me I hoped I could train my accent away. For months I would watch movies and national geographic documentaries to mimic the accents of the actors and narrators. My parents thought it was a little strange but didn’t seem too worried. Soon I was getting better and it became fun to learn the rules that distinguish accents and pretty soon I was learning to mimic a few others besides
English is not my first language. In fact, I didn’t learn it well enough to have a conversation until I was about 10 years old. I remember the embarrassment of being new to a country I called home after living in Mexico for years. Things changed quickly the first day of 8th grade. I remember being energetically greeted by a slender athletic man in his fifties in a muggy summer morning. The hum of the air conditioning as welcome sound as we found our seats in this room that smelled of being closed the last few months. His name was Mr. Goodman and he was, by most accounts, an “asshole.” This was a descriptor of which he was proud. Even the other faculty thought so. He was a strange man, but he had his reasons. Surprisingly, he was also one of the best teacher’s I’ve encountered to this day. He had a brutally visceral way of making you care about learning. His class would soon change the way I spoke English for the rest of my life.
Towards the end of the first month …show more content…
The days following that day all I could think was “Who did he think we was to talk to someone he didn’t know like that. To tell me I’d end up working there just like that. Over time however I began to grasp English concepts better and better. Conversational grammar became a fascination. Pretty soon I was getting really good at telling stories in English as I could in Spanish at the time, but there was still something wrong. It wasn’t the order of my words but their sound.
The more I focused on my accent, the more I hated the way it sounded. Deep down in me I hoped I could train my accent away. For months I would watch movies and national geographic documentaries to mimic the accents of the actors and narrators. My parents thought it was a little strange but didn’t seem too worried. Soon I was getting better and it became fun to learn the rules that distinguish accents and pretty soon I was learning to mimic a few others besides