Hanyu_Zhang

Literacy Ethnography
I was born in the captial of China, Beijing, and thanks to my parents support and various opportunities around me, I started learning English at a every young age, maybe about 5 or 6, for nearly 2 years earlier than the most of kids. I rebemembered when I was learning new English words, there were word-tags everywhere at my house, a note with sofa on the sofa, a tag with mirror sticked to the mirror, a card with table on the table and so on. One thing I will never forget is that, during the nights, those tags would sway and waggle because of the air conditioning, and I was scared to death by those scenes and always turned on the lights to observe it, making sure it was just the word card instead of a ghost. So I nearly look at those vocabularies ten times a day, and they never fade away in my memories. By this method, I built up my Chinese with my English at home at a very young age, and these word cards also contribute to my habit of learning, make me into a visual learner.

Hanyu_Zhang

Most of my literacies is gained at home, by self-enjoyment of reading books and also, by communicating with as well as inmitating my parents. My parents love books, comparing to electronic books on laptop, they are more obsessed by printed books, so there are lots of things to read in our house. They love to read, and their taste are not narrow down to only a few subjects, their collections range from world history, religions, literatures, philosophy to biology, physics and agricultre. I can always have an easy access to read books which I have interests in, and by reading that, more questions coming out, thus I read more. Inside my home, printed resources count for nearly 70 percent of literacy materials, including books, magazines and Newspapers, and all of these resources are in Chinese. Because of this environment of reading and writing based on physical platform, I get used to more classical way of learning. Even after I came to United States, where seems focusing on digital data to study, I still like to print out all the electronic documents and organize them into different folders for different study subjects. Among all the resources inside my home, my favorite one is the Newspaper which our family ordered, called Beijing Youth Daily, but unlike my father who likes economic section, nor my mother who prefers politics section, I love entertainment section best. It contains some funny comics and stories, as well as Sudoku and Crossword puzzles. And for me, the first thing after the Newspaper arrived at my home is to take out the entertainment section and check the answer for former days puzzles and then start todays. Although this section only involves with limited information, but the visual literacy, such as pictures, charts, puzzles help to build my unique way of thinking and

Hanyu_Zhang

learning in sub-consciousness. Later on, with the increasing passion of Sudoku, I even brought couples of toilet paper with Sudoku on it. (Then it became pure fun for solving puzzles, its original use as toilet paper had faded away, absolutely.)

I should admit that because I can only have easy access to books my parents brought, so in some content, I have a very limiting choice of reading. For instance, I havent read a single comic book in my childhood becuase I cant find on our bookshelfs. Anothor important part is that my parents' literacy preference have a great impact on my literacy. So although I have many literacy opportunities to read about history, philosophy and art, I don't have access to read books about comics, science fiction and other genres. When connection my situation to what we learned on class, my family members' reading preference is an invisible force towards my literacy, it gives my some privileges but meanwhile, it limites my choices. And I think the power of these invisible forces always play an crucial role on my literacies, some time even more influential than the visible one.

Moreover, thanks to my parents love for books, they always can give me instructions when I dont know what to do. Every vacation, my father will recommend some books to me, and before decide to choose which one to read, he will tell me what are the different directions those books focusing on, so I can pick the one that I like most. Following his instructions, I save a lot of time for choosing books, thus I can squeeze more time and energy to read more, and on and on. And

Hanyu_Zhang

also, I benefits a lot from one of my fathers habits, he gets used to write his opinion and general comments of the book on the front page, and also, note down some thoughts during the reading on the margins, by looking at his prefactory reflection, I can have a rough figure about this book and then decide whether I should read it.

Literacy can be gained through various ways and media, by far I already talked about initiative absorption, unconsciously influences, and now comes to forced implantation. Every child grows up under the expectancy of their family, and at least in some content, they are asked to do something by their parents. For me, when I was in primary school, my mother planed a schedule for me to recite one Chinese poetry every day. This is quite common in China because we studies Chinese ancient poetry at primary school, middle school, high school and even college. So in order to get my learning more easier for my future study, I started reciting those

Hanyu_Zhang

poetry before I learned them. By reading the poetry again and again in one day, I could recite in at the end of the day even though I didnt have a clear understanding of what that means. Considering this kind of situation is also a resource of literacy events I have in the home setting. Despite of soundless literacy at my home, communication also plays a significant role for me. Due to one child policy in China, I have a small family, my father, my mother and me. It is not crowded at home but it is very warm and sweet. My family members chat a lot at home, policy, news, funny stories, we kind of talking about everything. To tell the truth Im not interested in politics, but since my parents enjoy exchanging their thoughts adn comments about that during lunch and supper, I unconsciously get involved. Usually by just listening, I gradually have a rough figure and some basic background and common sense about governmental mechanism.

Hanyu_Zhang

It makes me think that sometime cooperation doesnt necessarily means to talk or response, even listen unwillingly or unconsciously can be call a sort of communication. And some time we are exposed to a literacy learning environment yet we havent notice it from the beginning to the end!

When talking about literacy, socio-emotion is also an crucial element in literacy, and at the home setting, the intimate relationship with parents just enlarges its influences and makes it more evident in our lives. In my parents eyes, Im an independent girl who can deal with everything by herself. So being afraid of letting them down, I never talked about struggles and troubles I have at school, instead, I told them about many examples of how I achieved goals perfectly and how I solved problems without help from others. In one word, to keep that label my family attached on me, I try very hard to make it seems thats not hard at all. And I think how people view you is also an invisible force to shape who we are. The society always says that to be yourself! Don't let others drag you down! But thinking further, is this slogan also a thought from others? How can we separate social ideology from our own behavior and thoughts? In conclusion, my literacy builidng based on home setting includes visual part, like initiative absorption, unconsciously influences and forced implantation, and also audio part, for instance, chatting and communication. There definitely some overlappings in between and all elements contribute to my uniqueness right now.