Thai Xiong
ENGL1A
February 14th, 2014
Personal Narrative Draft 2
Writing is not something that I would,
on a normal day, in a mentally stable state, find too undeniably as such of an
imaginary formidable enemy to which I feel I can’t face it. Relax. No, no that’s not how I really write, but in pseudo-interpretation
it just means that I’m confident enough in myself with my current writing
ability to not be afraid of writing. But writing never just came easy to me
running with open arms, as I’m sure other people can relate to with as well. I’ve
come to realize that my overall rhetoric changes with influence of my
surroundings, and who the people around me are. Coincidentally, I’ve moved
around quite a bit in the United States, from Wisconsin, to Minnesota, to
California. Thus, I’ve been influenced by many different people from many
different places with their own modality in speaking, writing, and even reading
as well.
Growing up in my hometown Wisconsin, I
was exposed to three languages at the same time as a sprouting child. English,
Hmong, and Gibberish. Okay maybe just two languages, three just sounded so much
better. But for the record, my siblings and parents always spoke baby-gibberish
to me as a baby and I picked up on the words. That taught my family and me a
great lesson. Don’t speak baby-gibberish to a child for too long; speak proper
English so that they can pick up on that, and not the baby- gibberish! As a
result I learned to talk fairly slow compared to the rest of my brothers and
sisters and I developed speech issues and obstacles. I had difficulty
pronouncing even the easiest of sounds, particularly the “s” and “th” sounds
for some reason. When school season came, life became say…less easy.
I was looked upon differently, when I
spoke, I was given a look of disgust, and not many other kids talked to me. I
felt so different, different from the rest, like I was the chosen one to do all
things known impossible to man, travel to the moon and harness– well although
as a 4th grader I did actually think things like that, I honestly
felt more like an outcast than anything. My brothers and sisters weren’t very
supportive at the time either; they mocked how I pronounced words and teased
me. One memory in particular is how I pronounced French fries as “peng pie,”
once again, troubles with the “s” sounds. The sounds of their mockery taunted
me for days, months, years, I stubbornly told them to “Tut up!” Stuck in my own
inability to speak right yet understand everything they were saying, I was in
endless frustrated cycle.
I still remember her face, my speech
teacher. I had speech therapy sessions Monday through Friday. I would never
notice her standing by the doorway to our classroom with her hands crossed,
waiting for me if it wasn’t for my teacher saying “Thai, honey dear your speech
counselor is here for you.” Each and every time I had to get up and follow her
to her office, I looked back at the class still in session and felt so
different; I dragged my feet out of the class. After a year and a half or so
from 4th grade on, I finally stopped sulking from all the mockery
and started moving forward.
Of course I didn’t let these
difficulties sink me down the drain; it had given me a motive. To change the
way people look at me, to master my English reading, writing, and grammar, and
of course, my speech pronunciation. Before I knew it, my grades in English were
getting higher and higher. Soon enough my teacher even used my papers as
examples of good grammatical structure to other children. (And boy is that a
big deal when your nine years old!) My progress was travelling well, and upward
bound, then the divorce between my parents took place. My family split in half,
all of the sons—except me, my father took, and all of the daughters went with
my mother and me. We relocated in Minnesota, the Twin cities, where my literacy
skills took a plunge, for better or for worse I wouldn’t be too sure.
Like a scene from a crude comedy movie,
the atmosphere I lived in for the next three to four years was a ghetto block, in
poor living conditions, and there was always men trying to sell me the newest
“candy.” If there wasn’t a shooting at least once a week, then something was
definitely wrong. You could only guess how my new school was like. In respect
the school that took me in I won’t say names, but I was enrolled in what I
remember as one of the lowest rated schools in Minnesota at the time. The students
there were so bad that they had control of the teachers, and not the other way
around. Teachers at my school rarely taught, my English teacher let us play
games for prizes all the time and we got 3 long recesses every day, thanks to
the demands of the wonderful students. The teachers I had were just too out of
touch with the children and how to approach them, it seems like they had given
up. Here in Minnesota, I picked up on the ghetto slang talk, and my literacy
skills never increased since Wisconsin, if not decayed. My classmates wrote
very, very slang, and even read words in ways I didn’t think existed. Slang
words aren’t very professional I know, believe me, but it’s still undeniably a
huge part of who I am.
Sure enough, there are more ups and
downs to my literacy path, but the main idea here was experience of different
cultures, different surroundings and how people interacted. In short I’ve
gained a lot of experience with the multi- modality of different areas, and how
one has to work around something. One particular language style isn’t going to
necessarily cut it. I believe that this is the mistake that some teachers make;
they don’t understand that some messages can’t be passed to a group through
without a certain modality. Some people understand things in different ways,
and not everyone interprets the same thing the same way. And this is the key, I believe, to my own
success. During last year of 2013, I had conducted an interview with one of my
old high school math teachers. He told me that one of the most important things
that employers will look for in a potential candidate is their experience with
the demographic and whether they could adapt to it well.
I
have that experience in different modalities, as I’ve been close to many different
cultures. One option that I’ve considered career path in the future is to be an
academic advisor or even an influential speaker. I would teach differently or
work around difficult situations, rather than hope that traditional methods
work. The value of understanding one’s audience cannot be more empathized in
these kinds of jobs. The roles that I see reading and writing in my life will
be standardized in the form of very formal letters, to business, employers. Yet
on the other hand
I
also definitely see myself creating influential texts for the next and upcoming
next generation of students. With my experiences of different writing
atmospheres, I hope to be able to successfully stay in touch with the next
generations and relay true inspiration.
Form #2
ReplyDeleteWriter: Thai Xiong
Reviewer: Blake Baumgardner
1. I really enjoyed the descriptive language in your writing. When you were recalling the memory of your speech therapist coming and taking you out of class, I pictured a small child with a sad frown on his face looking back at his classmates with his head down and it gave me a frown on my face reading as it was so sad.
2. A. This paper is about your personal history with communication, reading, and writing.
B. The narrative does an amazing job addressing this point.
C. It also fulfills the requirements of the assignment.
3. In the beginning of the narrative, you wrote word for word as if you were talking to somebody and I found it very confusing.
4. “Each of your paragraphs discusses only one idea, and everything in the paragraph is related to that specific idea.”
5. The narrative did wonderful job responding to the purpose of this assignment. Your descriptive language was really good as I got great mental images from every story. The majority of your narrative was very formal and coherent and I appreciated that. As I said before though, I found your intro very difficult to read due to the amount of informal writing. Explaining your history after Minnesota and here in California would be nice. Then, possibly expanding on your future may give more insight into the rest of your writing.