What Artifact Does Gaytan Describe In Her Narrative

She married a young Mexican-American dental technician at age 16 and gave birth to three children, Victor, Mario, and Martha. Her children were put into a group called “Yellow Birds,” a group for slow learners. Guadalupe’s children had followed their mother’s path and they can’t learn like other children. One of the three teachers told Guadalupe that her children would do better if they spoke English at home. Guadalupe decided to go back to school to learn English.

In Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood by Richard Rodriguez, various stylistic devices and rhetorical strategies are used such as symbolism, and pathos. Symbolism Rodriguez uses in the piece, consists of his home, and the general public. To young Rodriguez, his time at home represented comfort, and safety. Furthermore Rodriguez's Home represented a “pleasing, soothing, consoling reminder” that he was in a sheltered environment away from “los gringos.” In contrast, the general public which consisted of Rodriguez’s neighborhood, school, and the store symbolised a time spent frightened by the english language sounds, the experience of feeling apart from english speaking children, and the idea that his parents were not powerful enough to protect him. Such symbolism is also used in order for Rodriguez to appeal to the audience's emotions in order to persuade them into agreeing with his argument on bilingual education. By Rodriguez sharing his experience of feeling afraid of the public language, he teaches the audience that while “it would have pleased me to hear my teachers address me in Spanish when I entered the classroom” he would delay learning the language of a public society. As Rodriguez and his siblings began to assimilate into the english language, he found that “The house I returned to each afternoon was quiet. Intimate Sounds no longer rushed to the door to greet me. There were other noises inside.” While this marked a lost of intimacy and the private language

Salais change from avoiding her native language to valuing her bilingualism. As a child, Salais grew up in a poor neighborhood “El Paso, Texas” which made her to be ashamed of her native culture, because

After Julia and her family got used to living in New York, getting accustomed to the type of buildings and their new environment in general became easier but being able to be seen through two different personas was much harder. Julia expressed this constant dilemma in knowing how to represent both her Dominican and now American side without losing “Julia”. The poem “Bilingual Sestina”, represents this challenge and how Julia found herself adopting english into her life with the chance of losing touch with spanish. That is what this poem deals with, the loss of a special feeling through the gradual loss of a language, “even spanish failed us back then when we saw how frail a word is when faced with the thing it names”(Julia Alvarez's "Bilingual

Introduction to reading comes through phonetic reading boxes. The reading boxes are cleverly organized, going from simple to the complex. Reading does not follow the same process of writing, which is taking our own thoughts and symbolizing. When we read, it is not our language with which we are working with, it is the author’s language. Reading is the analysis of the language followed by a synthesis. Story telling and socio-dramatic play in the environment can help the child develop an imagination that fosters a higher capability to understand what is being read to them.

Richard Rodriguez and Amy Tan are two bilingual writers. Rodriguez comes from a Latin background where both his parents speak Spanish. Tan is a child of Chinese parents. Though they share some of the same situations; each has a different way of portraying it. This gives the readers two different aspects of being bilingual. Rodriguez told his story in Aria: a Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood. Tan told hers in Mother Tongue. In spite of the fact that they both wrote about their experiences of being bilingual, they told their stories were for very different reasons.

I teach fourth grade language arts where my main focus is to prepare my students to write a personal narrative for the Nebraska State Writing Test in January. Reading and writing are intertwined in my area of professional responsibility as I motivate my students to write a well-organized, creative personal narrative. As I have taught writing, I have found reading, writing, speaking, and listening go hand in hand when composing a personal narrative (Bruning, 2011, p. 299).

My literacy narrative first unfolded in the playroom of my childhood home when I was an inquisitive two-year-old. My parents would sit down with me on the carpet and patiently teach me sight words. Every time I would

In our current society, literacy is defined as the ability to read and write. Though this is a common trait among individuals in our society, it is one that I view unique to every individual who had the opportunity to obtain it. I will retell my literacy journey in a way that encompasses one of my favorite theories in writing, the mono-tale of the Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell. This theory states that the Hero’s journey is a pattern in a narrative that forms the basic template of all great stories (Gunn 1).

In the poem “Bilingual Sestina” by Julia Alvarez the narrator takes the reader on a journey on how difficult it is to translate from English to Spanish as a bilingual speaker. The narrator of Bilingual Sestina helps the reader internalize that bilingual Spanish speakers see Spanish as a soothing and comfortable language that is very intimate while English can seem like a dull language that is difficult to communicate. The narrator of Bilingual Sestina helps embody that mixing two cultures consequently leads assimilation and to the loss of individuality.

Throughout the article, Gee makes two strong statements regarding what defined literacy dealt with more than simply reading and writing. He argues that language and culture are additional aspects of what builds literacy. These are aspects that are learned and acquired, but those create two different discourses, primary and secondary. The primary discourse consists of the things we have learned within one’s growing environment and first encounters with one’s primary language. As these two discourses moves forward through certain viewpoints, concepts, and values found within the continuous and changing environment. Ultimately stating that language and culture are the building blocks to lead into the acts of reading and writing.

I do not personally feel as though there was one single event that gave me a well-rounded definition of literacy or cultural literacy. Rather, it has been throughout the course of my education that brought me to my definition of what literacy is and how one acquires the abilities involved in it. Some say that there is a point in their lives in which they become “conscious” of literacy,

In The Theory Behind the Dictionary by E. D. Hirsch Jr., Hirsch discusses the topic of what he calls “cultural literacy”. In summation, cultural literacy is the basic background information everyone should be taught and know, in order to have a better understanding of new information learned in the future and will promote growth in Academics and Society. This basic knowledge equips everyone with the ability to understand more and more complicated subjects simply because they have a better understanding of more rudimentary subjects. Hirsch describes this concept in The Theory Behind the Dictionary, stating “We have long known that there is a high correlation between students’ reading ability and their ability

Cultural factors always shape the ways different communities engage in readinf and writing. The research shows that the language with which children are socialized to become competent members of their community and competent users of their particular language is imbued with cultural markers general beliefs, values, and norm, as well as specific beliefs and practices related to children's development(Building Literacy Instruction From Children’s

This course has expanded my knowledge and view of reading and writing vastly. Following each paper, reading, and class discussion I learned more about myself as a student, and the world as a whole. I have found the books Rules for Writers and Ways of Reading thoroughly helpful throughout the course. This class entails a variety of aspects of the problem-posing concept of education; it truly involves the students and teaches them to think, read, and write individualistically, analytically, and clearly.