Richard Ly ENC1102 Literacy Narrative Professor Wolcott From the first day of Kindergarten to the last day of High

school, there was always some form of Literacy class, whether it be learning the "ABCs" or AP Language. No matter how many times I've taken an English class, like my fellow science majors, reading and writing was never my strongpoint. However, with all the books, help from teachers, family, and "others", and lessons learned, becoming a well spoken, literate student was what I was able to amount to. Everyone's first challenge in their literacy journey, was to learn English. I was in a bit of a different situation since I grew up a Vietnamese-speaking home. Growing up, Vietnamese was all my parents spoke. Thanks to my brothers, however, I was able to practice speaking English before I started attending school since all my brothers were already attending school and learning to speak English. By the time I was four years old, both English and Vietnamese were spoken inside the house. Talking to my brothers wasnt the only influence on my English. When I started attending school, I was able to further improve my English. I remember when I would wait for my parents to pick me up in first grade, my teacher, Mrs. Jones would put on a kids show with lions in the library. This show would explain the correct use of grammar and introduced new words every day. Small things such as that show and educational computer games with the

aardvark "Arthur" I played were a great influence on creating a stronger background of basic English. Even with these helpful tools I used, I still struggled in reading, so my father had me be tutored by Mrs. Jones. So every day after class, I read small books out loud to her as fast as I could (where she could still understand what I was saying, of course). Jumping to high school, this is where my literacy skills really did reach a new level. It wasn't just because of the harder classes, it was because of a newly found motivation to strive to become a more literate student. At this time in my life, I knew I already acquired a decent literary background, I just didn't know how much more I had compared to my fellow peers. When I was going in for an interview for a job at a fine dining restaurant in high school, I spoke with the owner for about 20 minutes, I shook his hand and shortly afterwards, he prompted me with a question: How old are you? I told him I am eighteen years old. He was shocked. He couldnt believe that I was still in high school just because of how I spoke. Well I did get the job and after my first day of work, I realized that I was working a lot of people twice my age. Some had children older than me. There was no way that anyone else at my school could work here because the owner saw the way I spoke as a sign of maturity. After that moment, I realized that speaking the way I did/do, was the best way to show that I was a bit more mature than the average high school student. One day at my job, I waited (served) on a table and during my spiel of the specials, I mispronounced a word from the description of the special. Quickly afterwards I apologized to the lady for my mistake and she responded Thats alright; youre not from this part of the world. I laughed in my mind a little, mainly because I was born in California. Well I ignored her

comment, smiled and walked away. Even though I spoke near perfect English to her (better than most people from "this part of the world", she still insisted on my origin based on my physical characteristics over my literacy skill. From experiences similar to this, it has given me another reason to further improve my literacy skills. From where I was when I was just four years old, learning to speak and write in English, to writing out this literacy narrative, I have made numerous milestones in my literary history. In Deborah Brandt's " Sponsors of Literacy", she uses the term "sponsor" to describe someone or some place that has contributed to one's improvements in their literary history. Although Brandt may or may not think so, I believe that the people who judged me based on age and heritage alone (e.g. the lady I served) could be considered sponsors since they, although unknowingly, did motivate me to further improve my literary skills. Aside from them, I would identify my other sponsors to be my brothers and Mrs. Jones, My 1st grade classroom, where I received tutoring, could easily be seen as an institutional sponsor. Brandt also describes the importance for materiality for some people. In my situation, watching the TV show with lions in the library and the computer game with Arthur would provide to be great examples for materiality. In the end, after all the work and experiences, I managed to become a well-spoken, literate student.

Works Cited Brandt, Deborah. Sponsorship to Literacy. 1997