For my literacy narrative, I wanted to focus on my journey as a visual learner and how it has helped me understand and come to terms with my relationship with the English language. Though the piece is still a work in progress, I wanted to connect my love of art and imagination into the way I approach and perceive the concepts of writing as well as language. Here is a small excerpt from my narrative that I would like to share with everyone:
“What are you so afraid of?” Mrs. Huang asked me one day during one of our one-on-one lessons. She had noticed that my progress had started to plateau over the past week. I could only shrug my shoulders as I sat in my chair, staring down at the little name tag taped onto my desk in front of me. On it, ‘Wanye (Tina) Zheng’ was written neatly in Sharpie in Mrs. Huang’s perfect handwriting. Though I recognized this to be my own name, the strings of letters looked so foreign to me; just a series of irregular shapes on a piece of paper that held no meaning. ‘That can’t be me,’ I remember thinking to myself. These squiggles were nothing like the intimidatingly intricate Chinese characters that I had grown so familiar and comfortable with; 鄭婉燁 (Zhèng Wǎn Yè).
Thank you for reading and please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions!
Hie Tina,
I really like how you started your essay with a question. I think it’s a great way to get the reader’s attention. I also loved how you described how you felt on that particular day. I think you’re doing fantastic, and I can’t wait to see everything. I enjoyed your overall style and how you presented your ideas. It flowed well and had a nice flow to it.
Hey Tina, I think it pretty interesting how much characters and letters played a significant role on how you viewed writing. Especially when writing, we give some much credence to words that are suppose to represent us that when the words are not genuine or ill advised the words become foreign to us in a sense. Just from your excerpt i can see the amount of introspection that is in your work.
This was surprisingly very relatable since when I first started learning English at least everything just looked like squiggly lines too. The struggle adapting to the U.S. writing systems was way different compared to back home.