I was born in Georgetown, Guyana and lived there for 8 years then I came to the U.S. with my mom and my sister. We moved to Brooklyn first to live with my Aunt and thatâs where I started my first school year in America. I had been placed in the 3rd grade and I was far behind my classmates when it came to any of the subjects, my worst class was English. In my country we speak an English based creole with African American and East Indian syntax, so it was hard for my teachers and classmates to understand me, it was also hard for me to understand them. My countryâs educational system wasnât as good as Americas, so I wasnât prepared to see how much harder English was in America than in my country. I was failing all my classes with 50âs and 60âs and what made it worse was that, that same year we moved to Florida where I would have to start over again meeting new people and learning English a different way because no two teachers teach the same. I was happy though because we moved in with my Aunt and sheâs a teacher so she would help me with my homework, and she made me become better at reading and writing. As a child my favorite book to read was âDragon Slayers Academyâ by Kate Mcmullan and âCharlotteâs Websâ by E.B. White. At first it was difficult reading these books, but as I kept on reading I was beginning to understand what was going on in the story and create a clear picture in my head. This helped me improve my reading and my writing, as well as my English which enabled me to talk to my teachers when I needed help and also make new friends.
Year: 2019
Response to Malcolm X “Learning to Read”
I found âLearning to Readâ by Malcolm X very interesting, because I gained some new knowledge about him that I never knew. Malcolm wasnât a very good writer and wasnât really educated and he saw his flaw when talking to Bambi and forced himself to fix that flaw, not many people can do that. Instead of just ignoring how much smarter Bambi was than him, Malcolm went to the prison library and took out books so he could learn to read, however he couldnât understand the words and sometimes skipped pass them, but couldnât understand what he was reading. Instead of giving up Malcolm went back to the library and got a dictionary so he can learn new words that he didnât know. He would sit down and just read the dictionary and record the new words he was learning. And he was actually remembering the words, and the ones he couldnât remember he went back to. Itâs amazing that Malcolm spent all those years in prison become a better reader, writer and critical thinker, while most people who have a chance at education just take it for granted. I like that even after prison he continued on to read books, he says you couldnât catch him with a 15 min break without a book in his hands.
Sandra Cisneros âOnly Daughterâ
Sandra Cisneros purpose into writing this story is to have readers picture what she was going through in her family .She was an Mexican American growing up with 6 boys being an only girl. From just knowing this you knew  it was hard for her. It was hard for her because she was the only one looked down on in her family and all her brothers are being looked at as most important. Her relationship towards her father was off. I had found it interesting that her father thought that she was wasting her education because she didnât get married when she was finished from college.. From my understanding, I thought that the father was basically saying that with all the knowledge she got from school  she wasted it by not having a family to pass it down to her own family. Being an only daughter left her to think a lot and she wrote on her thoughts. The best moment in the story was her father reaction towards her writing and she was finally noticed by him
Sandra Cisneros only daughter
I found a lot of interesting facts in the text, firstly I like how she was able to create something out of loneliness. She was able to utilize her time in a more useful way by processing something mentally and writing it to the world. Sandra wanted her father to treat her the same as her brothers which is accepting and understanding her text. Her father always wanted to boast about having seven son, he didn’t appreciate the fact that he was having a daughter. She just wanted to make her father proud. We can relate sandra’s experience to other females having a lot of male siblings. they feel disconnected and sometimes wish for having a female sibling. In some cultures females are expected to have children at a certain age . When they reach that stage and still haven’t married or have children they start to receive pressure from family and sometimes friends. Sandra’s father wanted to see her daughter get married that’s why she encouraged her to go to college so that she can find a husband. Female siblings come across situations like this but I believe in today’s society male siblings go through the same situation as well also male siblings turn to be protective of their female sibling especially when they are younger . Lastly some parents do support their children when they start to see positive outcomes or a reward. during Christmas vacation her dad read some of her text and really loved it. Sandra just wanted to please her dad and she was able to accomplish that goal through writing.
Personal Experience Essay/mother tongue by Amy Tan
I chose this text because out of all of the text that we have read in class this was the one that I felt connected to and can correlate it with my own personal experience. Based on the text Amy tan showed her mother’s level of english and her inability to express herself in English. She also showed how her mother’s language has influenced her academically and socially. Even though Amy tan was chinese American, this is a text that every child coming from a minority household can relate to. I made my emphasis on the time when Amy’s mother went to the hospital but based on her lack of English and struggling to Express herself the doctors and the nurses did not even take her serseriou as compared to where amy intervened. They showed Amy more respect ,apologized and assured her that the cat scan will be found soon. This clearly show that people are treated some kind of way when they can’t Express themselves in perfect English. People turn to avoid them regardless of their age or ethnic group. The text is a typical example, they showed amy more respect than her mother. I have experienced similar situation with my mother and sister. We moved from Africa to reside with my father in the United states. Unfortunately my mother waa not familiar with the English language so my sister was forced to move around with my mother whenever she has an appointment and orientation. She always said she wish she had her education before moving to the United states. We clearly understand where she was coming from because she lost her parents at a very young age so she was introduced into trade and traveling in other to support herself. She later moved to her elder sister’s house but still didn’t get the opportunity to study in school. She gets very emotional every time she shares her childhood stories with us . My sister receives all her business and professional calls. Recently she came up with the idea of speaking English at home so that she can learn from us. We started speaking English at home and corrected her everytime she made a mistakes. We became her personal teacher and taught her how to read. During the past few years , we have experienced some growth in her vocabulary and her level of confidence. She now goes outside by herself without my sister assisting her in applications or appointments also she seems happier whenever she goes outside to even purchase an item at at our local deli. In the past few years she felt intimidated whenever someone approached us with English. She was always shy and avoided contact with people. Surprisingly we realized that she can remember things for along period of time. She learns very fast and always pressure us to teach her something new.
Malcolm x learning to read
Reading malcolm x text was very surprising and motivating. The surprising part is, a text structured perfectly like this coming from someone with only a middle school education and the motivating part is a prisoner building on himself and using his resources to acquire knowledge. He was passionate about education and eager to be enlightened. He was opened to the world and learned about different cultures and African American history through reading. He saw himself in different places through visualization and reading of different text. Reading gave him freedom and opened his eyes to the outside world even though he was locked up .
Personal Experience
Standing in front of a courtroom with an immense amount of eyes watching my every move and ears listening to any possible mistakes that may be made. Standing in front of a judge, who was actually just a practicing attorney, the power they still possessed over me and the validation they owned I needed and wanted in return. This was my thought process during my mock trial competition my first year. During practice I needed to write my own direct and cross examination for the case we were competing as well as an opening. Needing to be aware of the proper legal terminology to use to sound like I knew what I was talking about required me to learn. Words and phrases that were being used that I was not aware of which made me feel unfit and in over my head to be able to succeed in this competition and overall field. I would go on quizlet and review certain terms that were frequently used such as the different types of objections and certain wording that was more proper to use when determining what was needed in the case whether it was civil or criminal. I would go over the terms constantly until I remembered what they meant and how they are supposed to be used. During practice I would have to focus on many different aspects of the language I used having to emphasis every point. Not being aware of these terms put me at a disadvantage since it was my first year competing and everyone else on the team had experience from the previous year. This discouraged me at first because of my struggle to learn these phrases for the first time when it was just a refresher for everyone else.Â
learning to read by Malcom x
in “Learning to Read,” an excerpt found in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, author Malcolm X attacks his illiteracy while imprisoned for battling the white man. Malcolm in his conversations with other prisoners realized he was not as articulate with the hustlers in prison as he was in the street. Bimbi, a fellow prisoner in Charlestown Prison would take over conversations because of his vast vocabulary and knowledge from reading. This knowledge was where Malcolm X drew his inspiration to be Malcolm just as intelligent. This was his initial start toward his autonomous learning. Malcolm X explains, âBimbi made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge.â He became fascinated with the vast amount of knowledge of Bimbi. When X first arrived in prison, the highest education he had was that of an eighth grader. Therefore, Malcolm begins reading to obtain the same eloquent speech, but he comes across a dilemma. X explains how he could not comprehend every word in the sophisticated books Bimbi read. Malcolm became frustrated because he could only read the words he knew but in the end had no understanding.but he keeps on going and learns how to surpass bimbis vocabulary
Personal Experience
It was senior year and for English, all the students needed to write a ten page Research Paper in order to graduate. The Research Paper was based on any topic of the students choice and everyone picked a topic close to their hearts. I choose to write about climate change, in a total of 13 pages (including work cited). At first, ten pages were just too much, too hard to achieve. As I started to write down all of the causes and effects, solutions and ways to prevent climate change, it was brought to my attention that throughout my writing, I was doing pretty good. Even though I was moving at a steady pace, I still needed to do more work on my paper. In class, the teacher would add and make notice that students needed to use full words because the paper was to be formal. I didnât  know that words little âdidnâtâ or canât, couldnât be used. It felt kind of weird in a way because those words have been apart of my vocabulary in both writing and in vocal conversations for along time. On the bright side changing all of those fragment words like couldnât, made my paper a little longer in order to meet the page requirement. Of the use of fragment words in my vocabulary, I started to think if speaking or writing with fragment words, meant that I wasnât using proper English. With that, if I expressed my opinion about something, does it matter as much as another person expressing their thoughts in complete words? Questioning myself has been something Iâve been doing for a long time.
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Malcom X âLearning How To Readâ
After reading the autobiography of Malcom X I can truly say that I feel inspired not only from his actions as a civil rights activist but as his thoughts on education itself. Growing up I never really knew a lot of Malcom X besides his role in the civil rights movement and how he went along with that role, never knew anything about his nationality, his background, his family and at last himself. This autobiography put more information in my mind about Malcom X compared to what I was receiving from school. Learning that he didnât graduate high school and his last encounter with school before getting arrested was 8th grade shook me at first, I related with him when it came to being in a different environment and atmosphere mentally when reading and I also connected with him when I found out his penmanship wasnât the best. He was connected to books and knowledge that made me changed the way I think about Malcom X. The use of diction during his speeches baffles me after learning more about him. He went out the way to ensure himself that he would be educated, then went out to educate, influence others and to express himself freely. He used to be in chains mentally and physically but the moment he was educating himself was the moment he felt free from both the mental and physical chains.
