Literacy Narrative Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Literacy Narrative - Essay Example Furthermore, learning a language amounts to the spread of literacy and fluency in yet another aspect and, thus, is helpful mainly to communicate with people. As a student from China, learning the English language did pose a few problems to me, however, gradually, I was able to catch on very well though not without a few eventful incidents and memories to remember the process by. â€Å"Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies.† (Malcolm X) Malcolm X, the renowned leader of Black America, has been an inspiration along my journey of learning English. His quote suggests that everything is possible, even teaching oneself an alien language. As I signed myself for some English speaking lessons, I felt excited knowing that I would be providing myself the opportunity to delve into another road in life and learn a number of new things which could help me somewhere in the future. Also, I retain a keen interest in reading and, thus, learning a new language means having twice the literature material, if not more, to read and gain knowledge and information. Initially, my enthusiasm knew no bounds as my instructor began teaching me the fundamentals of the English grammar; however, soon I became weary and began to lose interest. With time, it was becoming frustrating to learn the language because I would often trip on my grammar and make silly mistakes; I would forget what certain words meant and where and how to use them in sentences; and I even got annoyed at myself for not being able to understand accents of the English speaking people living abroad. However, my dream of studying abroad in an English speaking environment kept me going and soon I realized just how funny the language was. I began to understand laughter-causing things like homonyms and puns, not to forget mentioning beautiful pro verbs and idioms that I began to make use of in my daily speech. My teacher was impressed with me as I took to reading books for children in English to begin with. My class was full of fresh zeal, both children and adults alike, trying to master the English language through skits, plays, dialogues, songs and poems. But for my teacher, I would not have been so fluent in the language today; he made sure that we signed up for participating in English plays, watching English movies and listening to English music while singing along in order to strengthen whatever knowledge we had, and to also make sure that we would not make silly mistakes while learning. I recall watching the film ‘My Fair Lady’, which is about a young girl trying to learn the sophisticated form of speaking in English in order to impress people from high society and make them believe that she fitted in there. That film gave me the motivation to open my books and practise my speech more and more because it helped me believe that I, too, one day, could be as polished in the language as she was. With time, I realized that watching English movies with their subtitles was one of the best ways to learn new sentences and how to use them in speech. Also, my teacher urged us to watch the news in English so that it would also help us keep in touch with current affairs from around the world and we would be able to