Speak Up
The concept of literacy in my life and career goal is not just to be able to read and write, but to be able to comprehend and make sense of the world around us. Literacy is essential to our everyday lives, it 's embedded in our social interactions and how we express our emotions to others. I’m majoring in nursing; literacy in my career field is to have the right education and schooling, having the heart and compassion to help others without having anything in return. Growing up Hispanic in America was a struggle for me because English was my second language. I overcame that with some motivation and I changed my fixed mindset to a growth mindset. In this film it made me comprehend literacy in a different way this film was called
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Raised in Los Angeles, California by an immigrant single mother. My mother came to America at only nineteen year old. She came here to pursue the American Dream to a better life and better life for her future children. My first language was Spanish; it was the only language I have known since birth. My mother would go to adult school at nights to learn English, but as a single mother, she couldn’t keep up with so much responsibility. At that time where we were living speaking little or no English was acceptable because we lived in an area of Los Angeles where it has the largest community of Latinos. It was common to have these problems. Neighbors, classmates, friends, families, strangers on the street, they all had that same struggle as my mother and I. When I started pre-school in a bilingual school systems my classmates and I would only speak Spanish and later on during the year our teacher would slowly integrate English with us. My teacher would speak to us in Spanish and we will answer her back in Spanish. Before I started first grade I moved out of busy urban Los Angeles to calm peaceful suburbs in Monrovia. We moved in …show more content…
She told my mother I would have a better chance of getting a greater education if we moved to Monrovia, because the classes were less impacted and had more resource. When we moved we left our friends, our community, our place we called home. I started first grade as the new kid; I had trouble fitting in at school especially in my classroom. My classmates could speak English fluently they spoke it so fast and with confident no one had stubborn accent everyone sounded the same except me. I couldn’t speak English with ease I felt socially disadvantaged. Due to the fact that I was a Spanish speaking girl in an English society, I felt like being different from other kids. I was terribly shy and hardly spoke a word at school in either language. I let my classmates and teachers think I was just a shy little Mexican girl because I was too embarrassed. I was picked on as a result, but was too afraid to speak up and defend myself. One day during back to school night, my teacher pull my mother aside asked something that I can never forget until the day I die. She asks her what was my nationality was I actually an American or did I come from Mexico. To have a teacher question your
Literacy gives courage and provides a positive influence in times of crisis.
Throughout Richards early childhood development he quickly understood that in order to succeed in America he would have to learn to confidently speak in English. Richard is Hispanic American and although he was born in America, Spanish was the only language that he was exposed to as a young child. He grew up in a home where Spanish flowed freely, but he soon realized outside of his home the language that he primarily knew was foreign. His parents spoke fluent Spanish along with all of his relatives. The brief encounters he experienced of his parents speaking English were only in public places and the proficiency was very poor. Rodriguez’s home was as a safety net for him and his Spanish speaking family with they are his only real connections to the outside world. It wasn’t until Richards encounter with his teachers that he and his family was heavily impressed on the importance of developing a public language. After the encouragement of the visit home from a teacher as a family
Literacy is defined in the film through the narration of the story. The narrator gives you a vivid and visual picture as he sets up each chapter and/or scene. His narrations are like a prologue to each chapter. The narrator dances back and forth into the life of the main character and the events of his life. I liken this to the old storytellers sitting around the campfire sharing tales.
...new right away I could relate it since English is my second language. In this poem there is a combination of the two languages I know, English and Spanish, which then converts into a new language Spanglish. Many Latino teenagers and children, like me, speak English at work and school and speak Spanish mostly when they are at home. Therefore, the way we Latino people speak is almost like the way Ms. Valdez wrote this poem. This poem is also a reality in the lives of those who migrate to the United States. Many immigrants see that everything is different and new. They also see that they have to slowly adapt to the new environment. Through Gina’s choice of words and imagery, she makes the Latino audience feel more serene with the American Language and culture. All of the humor, imagery, and similes used in this poem made this poem much more enjoyable and relatable.
Many people immigrate to the United States from different countries to begin a better life. Once in the American territory, the first step for success is to learn the English language. Richard Rodriguez, the writer of "Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood" describes the language decisions he faced as a child: "Outside the house was public society; inside the house was private" (16). The English language is the primary language in the United States, and it must be learned to be able to communicate with the public world. The language that we speak at home is considered to be private because it is only used in the presence of the people we feel comfortable with, our family. Families immigrate to the United States from Mexico to find and give their children a better opportunity to succeed. The children of immigrants who have been raised or born in the United States were able to adapt much faster to the English language. The Spanish language, in the case of Mexicans, is part of our origin that most of us inherit from our ancestors although in the United States many, including me, seem to add a new language, which gives us better opportunities.
Anzaldua grew up in the United States but spoke mostly Spanish, however, her essay discusses how the elements of language began to define her identity and culture. She was living in an English speaking environment, but was not White. She describes the difficulty of straddling the delicate changing language of Chicano Spanish. Chicano Spanish can even differ from state to state; these variations as well as and the whole Chicano language, is considered a lesser form of Spanish, which is where Anzaldua has a problem. The language a person speaks is a part...
But Leticia would take a class where they teach her English and she was working at a Mexican restaurant. When her husband and her had kids and they just balanced the days of taking care of the kids so they would both be doing what they wanted but it turned to be difficult so she stopped going to classes to take care of her kids she stop working to take care of her kids because she didn’t want to miss anything of her kids growing up because like they say kids grow up really fast and she didn’t want to regret. But there were some moments that she did regret not continue English classes because in the United States all you speak is English and she loves making new friends but she doesn’t know how to speak the language she always feels left out when people are talking around her because she feels like they’re talking bad about
Her parents were immigrants who had to get used to the American People, along with
For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author describes the social, cultural and linguistic difficulties encountered in America as he attempts to assimilate to the American culture. Richard Rodriguez by committing himself to speaking English, he lost his cultural ties, family background and ethnic heritage.
Anzaldua was a Mexican descent, but born and raised in Texas. I believe she included this in her essay on purpose for readers to understand that her situation was not by choice. This sense of helplessness will help gain readers’ sympathy. She was brought up in a community that speaks both English and Spanish, English while in school and Chicano while at home. However, this was scrutinized by the respective groups as they were unable to
In Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue” she illustrates the characteristics of both first and second generation immigrants. Also, she uses her short story “Two Kinds” to represent these characteristics. First generation immigrants are the first of their family to move to the United States. Tan’s essay describes her mother as a limited English speaker and describes her English as limited, broken and fractured (Tan essay, 3, 7). In “Two Kinds” the mother who is first generation in America also was a limited English speaker, throughout the story speaks in “broken
The teenage years and transition to adulthood is in itself a very difficult period. Blending or fitting in are omnipresent issues that must be dealt with. For children of immigrants, this difficulty is only intensified through language. Both Amy Tan and Khang Nguyen strategically use narrative anecdotes and employ several rhetorical devices to illustrate this struggle in their works, “Mother Tongue” and “The Happy Days,” respectfully. Amy Tan chooses her childhood home as the primary setting of her work. This allows her to focus primarily on her conversations and interactions with her mother. However, she also gives several anecdotes in which her mother’s background and improper English negatively affected her, outside the home. Through her recollection of these events, she reveals both her immediate reactions and her thoughts and opinions looking back as an adult. Both the comparison of settings and changes in point of view, help to illustrate Tan’s intimate relationship with her mother, and her desire to understand it.
Growing up in working class family, my mom worked all the time for the living of a big family with five kids, and my dad was in re-education camp because of his association with U.S. government before 1975. My grandma was my primary guardian. “Go to study, go to read your books, read anything you like to read if you want to have a better life,” my grandma kept bouncing that phrase in my childhood. It becomes the sole rule for me to have better future. I become curious and wonder what the inside of reading and write can make my life difference. In my old days, there was no computer, no laptop, no phone…etc, to play or to spend time with, other than books. I had no other choice than read, and read and tended to dig deep in science books, math books, and chemistry books. I tended to interest in how the problem was solved. I even used my saving money to buy my own math books to read more problems and how to solve the problem. I remembered that I ended up reading the same math book as my seventh grade teacher. She used to throw the challenge questions on every quiz to pick out the brighter student. There was few students know how to solve those challenge questions. I was the one who fortunately nailed it every single time. My passion and my logic for reading and writing came to me through that experience, and also through my grandma and my mom who plant the seed in me, who want their kids to have happy and better life than they were. In my own dictionary, literacy is not just the ability to read and write, it is a strong foundation to build up the knowledge to have better life, to become who I am today.
It felt she did not care to teach the subject to me, because a lot of the other classmates were getting it, and I was not, I was getting a personal misdirection, and my reason was because she had such a disliking for me. If I could get in trouble for something she was going to get me in trouble for it. The teacher would e-mail and call my mother, because she could not make parent teacher conferences, and I would hear only negative attributes of myself, “being a bad student,” “very disruptive,” “no interest in class,” at one point I was even called leader of a “dark gang,” in the school; I wish my mother would have kept this to herself, because I did not take the criticism lightly. Hearing all this, and already having negative feelings toward this teacher and english, I was in no mood for reading and writing, i was ready for war. It really was not until the end of middle school and started realizing how much of an impact reading and writing was starting to take. I was going to be entering high school soon, and they did not have accelerated reader, so it was not going to be as easy to pass. It was not until the end of 8th grade that I realized I should probably work on my english abilities.
I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say.” Not only did Tan perceive her mother in a simpler way, dismissing her intelligence and sophistication, but so did many other people who heard Tan’s Mother speak. The way she spoke using incorrect words, simple sentences and improper grammar mad outsiders think she was not a competent interlocutor. Many immigrants are facing similar issues. Because they do not have a perfect command of the language spoken in the country they are dismissed by salespeople, real estate agents, and office personnel.