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I have to do a Literacy Learning Letter. You have to be equal to…
I have to do a Literacy Learning Letter. You have to be equal to this Take it as an example and it has to be 3 sheets.
January 28, 2022
Dear Students,
There have been a multitude of experiences in my life that shaped, and continue to shape, my identity as a literacy learner. As noted, an individual’s literacy identity encompasses their identities as a listener, speaking, reader, and writer. While there have been a multitude of experiences that have shaped, and continue to shape, my identity as a literacy learner, four stand out in my memory.
One of my most poignant experiences to shape my literacy identity occurred in 2005 when I moved to a small town outside of Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. I moved to the country and worked for a non-profit that supported public school teachers in creating student-centered curriculum. Prior to that year, I took years and years of Spanish. I took Spanish all through high school, and then took several classes in college. I believed I was quite fluent and was able to read and write in the language with relative ease. However, I was in for a huge linguistic transition in August 2005 when I moved to the town. I decided to rent a room in the home of one of the assistant principals that I worked with, believing this would help me meet people and build relationships. I struggled A LOT the first few months, the dialect used in DR was different than what I had learned, people spoke extremely fast – extremely fast. For many weeks, actually maybe it was months, my brain was fatigued at the end of the daybecause I was truly immersed in the language. My brain was literally exhausted! I quickly realized that there was a HUGE, HUGE difference between one’s written literacies in a language (i.e. the ability to read and write), as opposed to one’s oral/aural literacies (i.e. the ability to listen and speak). The friends that I made in those first few months were so patient with me because the phrase I probably used hundreds of times a day was, “Dime otra vez.” The direct translation, “Tell me again” – but, in the town I lived in it was a polite way to say, “Huh?” In addition, the language was infused with deep religious roots. Catholicism was the dominant religion that was deeply rooted in the language and culture. I was raised Catholic, but stopped practicing at this time, however, I went to church, as it was what you did on Sundays. When you left someone you always said, “Adios, si dios quiere.” (Bye, god willing.) It’s surprising how fluent I became at the end of that year in the dialect used in that small town. When I moved back to the U.S. I moved to San Francisco where I taught elementary school, my students/families who were Spanish-dominant were primarily from Mexico and I quickly realized there were distinct nuances in the language that was quite different from the Spanish I spoke in the DR.
In 2007 I moved back to San Francisco where I was admitted into a program to earn my Ph.D. I thought I was a highly literate person. I could read and write in two languages – English and Spanish – and I was confident in my abilities. During my first semester, I took a linguistics class where we had to read different texts and books from renowned scholars. I remember I had to read a chapter, an essay from M.M. Bakhtin’s book, The Dialogic Imagination. It felt like the longest chapter I had ever read in my life, despite the fact that it was 20 or so pages. It was so difficult to understand – the reading was in English, however, I felt like I was reading something in an unfamiliar language. I remember almost wanting to cry and felt like I made a horrible mistake by going back to school to earn my PhD. My identity as a reader went from an individual who was confident to a person who lacked confidence and skills. I quickly learned that I was not familiar with this genre of scholarship and, like most things in life, over time it became easier. When I first started school, I would sometimes need to read and reread and reread the same reading – three, four, sometimes five times. However, over time, I became more fluent and skilled in reading scholarly texts about language and linguistics. Eight years later I finally earned my degreeJ
A third experience that shaped my literacy identity was when I received my first Smartphone in 2016. Prior to that time, I had a flip phone and didn’t text that much, because, quite frankly it was too difficult and annoying. My younger sister and one of our mutual friends took me out one night and handed me a box, when I opened it – it was my friend’s old Smartphone. She gifted me her old phone and told me I had to upgrade my phone – that people made plans through texts and I needed to join society because it was frustrating for them to not be able to make quick and easy plans with me. So, I connected that phone to my plan and it opened up a whole new word of communication to me – the art of texting!!! To be honest, I was confused and overwhelmed by the acronyms, the emojis, the GIFs, that people used. The genre of texting and group texting was a whole new world. On group texts, people responded in seconds and sometimes I would check my phone and I had missed long, long threads of texts – my phone would identify over 50 unread texts. It was quite overwhelming – until I realized I wasn’t really missing much in these group chats – it was sort of just idle chatter. However, I also learned a whole new genre of acronyms. For example, my friend used the word SMH, which I thought meant that someone was making a frustrated sound of “Shhhh-muuuhhh.” Similar to the written language in English and Spanish, I used my phonics skills and sounded out the word. I realized that this not a word, rather an acronym and in the written genre of texting, acronyms were pervasive, which means there was no need to employ my decoding skills. Needless to say, my friend gifting me her old Smartphone helped me quickly realize that I was not literate in the written genre of texting.
Finally, 2016 was a pivotal year that made me question my identity with literacy – specifically, in thinking about social media and how truth is conveyed. The election of 2016, and throughout the former president’s tenure, the whole notion of truth was questioned – specifically, the individual, as opposed to morality and knowledge, became the judge of truth. People began to question the news, and this idea of “fake news” became pervasive because of the former president’s actions and words. Any news that one did not like or agree with could be deemed as ‘fake news’ and thus this idea of truth became ambiguous. In the following election in 2020, the whole notion of a democracy was questioned. Our society as a whole quickly realized that word democracy was not in fact a noun, but rather an action, democracy is an act – it means to act in way to restore a government where people’s voices are acknowledged. Thus, the word democracy became a verb, a critical verb that were linked to our freedom in the U.S. Democracy is not a static state where people have the authority to choose their government, but rather democracy is a verb, an action that a society must actively fight to uphold or it can be torn down by authoritarian leaders.
As you can see my identities with literacy is constantly changing and will continue to evolve as time passes.
Image transcription text
1:13′ III Language Learning Letter (1) In 2007 I moved back to San Francisco where I was admitted into a
program to earn my PhD. I thought I was a highly literate person. I could read and write in two languages 7
English and Spanish 7 and I was con?dent in my abilities. During my ?rst semester, I took a linguistic…
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