A look into the literacy of the English language
Abstract
The following cover letter and essay explores my introduction to the English language course: “The Significance of Language, Voice, and Identity within Writing”. The essay mainly focuses on my experiences in the development of my English language skills. It portrays my belief and appreciation that each of the experiences played significant roles separately, only to come together to form the foundation of my current proficiency of English language and literature. The cover letter describes the driving forces which inspired and helped me to express my experiences in the words of an English Owl.
Cover Letter
At first, the language and literacy narrative bemused me, I wondered, why it was so important to write how my understanding of English came to be, what influenced me and what played the role of a turning point in my literacy. Always working with facts and subjects that can be presented in mathematics or a table of data sheets, I never felt any interest in literature. I never found the literary value of my own mother tongue, let alone another language, in this case, English. However, I had a paradigm shift starting this course. In its first phase, I was introduced to English in a different way. All my life, in my country, Bangladesh, I was taught English as any other subject like science or math. I had not used English to express anything rather than some semi-memorized or completely made up answers to the questions of my English exams, and in my undergraduate science courses, as they were in English medium. In short, I have only ever used English to write a fact or describing a fact, and that is how far my language and literacy went. Starting this course, I wrote my first story, first time writing something, not to describe a fact, rather, in lack of words, an imagination. This turning point, for the first time, has made me wonder, can I become a writer instead of a scientist. There are few papers I have gone through since the start of this course and almost all of them influenced my perspective of my language literacy.
After I wrote my first story, this course introduced me to different forms of writing stories. I never would have thought of writing a story, where you end up telling a story to yourself as a third person. “Alma” by Junot Diaz, has successfully perplexed me, introduced to me, a different way of telling a story.
Furthermore, “Soundhouse” by Rosina Lippi-Green opened another door. It made me realize that sometimes even accents are considered a different language, in addition, how deep rooted someone’s accent is, how it is made and how it changes. It felt like I was studying a scientific paper on a house building project that mirrored the creation of an accent by a child growing up.
Finally, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan. Even though I have always wondered many things happening around me with a scientific mind, I have never given any thought to one of the most important instruments of mankind, language. Through the “Mother Tongue”, language turned out to be a great subject to do research on. How it changes unconsciously as our audience changes and how emotions play a great role in not only what we speak but how it is spoken.
Only one English course, not even a quarter way through, has brought sparks of inspiration and wonderment, which, up till now, I found only in science. I have found another thread of knowledge and understanding, and it has got me tangled. I wonder eagerly, what more interesting things I will get to learn about my own literacy of the English language. I ponder how my “Soundhouse” was built and how many Soundhouses I have. I might try writing stories from different person’s view, even the second person’s view. Moreover, I have become more aware how I unconsciously change my accent when my audience changes, for both English and Bengali. Finally, while wondering all these things and one unavoidable circumstance, this course, has brought me to write my Language and Literacy Narrative. In my narrative, I contemplate the growth of my English language.
The Average English Owl
In a developing country, where English is the second official language, learning it starts from an early stage in life. I believe, I started to learn the English alphabet before I even learned to count the numbers in my own mother tongue. English was introduced to me more as a chore, it was a subject like any other subject in school, and I had to pass, no, passing was not enough for my father, I had to get at least 90 percent. Before I began my tale of English literacy, let’s establish that I am an owl by birth, observant, understanding things quickly, but with a very bad memorizing capability. Thus, I failed to memorize English like I did on any other subject. Memorizing English? Yes, in my country, in the primary level, kids memorize paragraphs, answers to short questions, words to fill in the blanks and every structural rules of English grammar. In short, it was an English hell for everyone at an early age. I could never remember rules to write a sentence or to keep the tense correct. I could not memorize a line, let alone a paragraph. Therefore, my childhood English, on the perspective of my grade sheet, was poor. However, being an owl was not bad, it ended up helping me to get quite accustomed to English before I even realized it.
My English language literacy career development program started with cartoons. However, my parents did not tell me to watch cartoons to learn English, rather I was drawn to it because of my overflowing imagination. Luckily, I had only English cartoons available in my cable connection. Lucky, in the sense that unlike then, today Bangladesh’s cable network mostly shows Indian cartoons, and as a result, my youngest cousin currently speaks fluent Hindi. I watched cartoons for hours, coming from school, before going to sleep and every other opportunity I could get. I was so addicted to it that my mother found it as an easy way of putting whatever “healthy foods” she could find in my mouth without any resistance. I would only come back to reality when my stomach couldn’t take in anymore food. Where my parents called this an addiction, I call it observation. This observation had paid off when I started to read and understand English stories, even though I did not know most of the words. I was able to find the meaning of the story as whole and I first realized it reading a borrowed book in English from my sister, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” I had read the first two part in Bengali translation, but the third one was my first “big” book in English. As my sister did not buy the Bengali translation, I had no other choice. However, at that time I did not think why I understood the book even though I could fill up a quarter of the book with words, whose meaning I did not know. This was the establishment of my understanding of English. At that time, anyone my age could tell by listening if it was English or not, could also read in English, though with broken pronunciation. However, understanding what I was reading or listening to, is a skill in itself.
In second comes writing. I had a very well-established understanding of the English language from my “observation”, not addiction, of English cartoons. My grammar, on the other hand, was solidified in the old-fashioned way, memorizing. Half way through my primary education, I was admitted to a tutoring center, which bombarded me with English grammar. Even though I have poor memorization capacity, whatever space I had in my brain was filled with rules of tense, narration, voice change, idioms & phrases, transition & conjunctions and my nightmare, writing an essay with the least amount of grammatical errors possible. I still haven’t mastered that yet. I was successful with the memorized grammar, for the next couple of years, but soon started to forget all the grammatical rules which I had memorized word for word. However, then something miracle happened. My understanding of the language as listener or reader, merged with the grammar rules. As a result, from the ending days of my primary school and later high school and till now, I correct my grammar by re-reading the sentence I had written. If it sounded odd, then there was something wrong with its grammatical structure, if it sounds right, then the grammar was right. If it sounded in between, where I was not sure, I kept changing the structures, writing in different ways, using different words, until it sounded right. Thus, I somehow with my poor memory, was able to get around English grammar.
If you study in a Bangla-Medium school in Bangladesh, it is expected of you to use Bengali. If you use English, then you are a “show off”, an unwelcomed guest in the community. English-Medium school was a different story. Those poor souls, drunk in English, could neither use their own mother tongue properly, nor English to express their emotions. I studied till high school in Bangla-Medium. Thus, it was not expected of me to speak in English. Moreover, I did not expect to speak in English, and I was also one of them who marked those who tried as “show off”. How foolish of an Owl I was. I was blind to the aspect of language itself, the meaning of it, the significance of it, and the great benefits of multilingualism. My eyes opened when I took the English language course in British Council. There I found myself in a room with many others, all of them older than me, where Bengali was forbidden and only English was permitted, regardless what you do. It is not like our teacher had a stick in her hand to keep us in line, rather we were given an opportunity. Nobody was there to scold us, tell us “show off”, laugh at our accents and broken English. We were by ourselves, cutting jokes, laughing, learning with what little spoken English we had, and it changed everything.
Language has three parts; understanding, writing and speaking. And one by one, all started to come together as pieces of puzzle in my life. When I started my first Undergraduate studies in BRAC University, I was given a non-credit English course to help me cope up, as I was primarily a Bangla-Medium student. Though the course had no credit, it was another lucky event and helped me become more comfortable in English. As there was no credit, meaning the grade will not get count, I felt a certain freedom. I could use “my” English will all its broken parts, to its fullest. As all broken parts were presented to my teacher, he was able to mend them properly. Since I did not hold back or try to cut parts of my imagination to keep the grammar correct, I was able to broaden my literacy greatly. Where many of my friends just strolled through the course without paying attention, the owl in me grabbed the opportunity. The course was my prey and its contents were my feast and I could eat as any way I would like without anyone judging me.
After two years since that non-credit English course, I came to USA. Landing in New York, I found out that people here did not even use “proper” English. For many, like me, English is their second language. Here, I have begun to use English not to pass a grade but as a language. Eventually, I was brought to the language and literacy course. This course is currently acting as another lucky thing that happened to me. Here, I am learning “how” I am using English and what other ways it can be used.
In conclusion, there was no specific event that alone improved my literacy of English. On the contrary, I had few lucky events and an owl-like observational intelligence which has brought me this far. All the events, my parents pushing me for good grades, unfortunate bombardment of English grammar, lot of scientific observation of cartoons, few lucky chances to spread my English wings and finally the thirst for knowledge that forever drives me to learn more, have led my literacy in English language to this level and I am always looking forward to more lucky events.
