Leslie Moreno Moreno 1
Professor Macklin
English 114 A
21, November 2011
Literacy Narrative
Children start attending school around four years old, and as they grow they start to develop two very important factors in their lives, reading and writing. Kids are told that they must remain in school in order to become someone in this world we live in. Besides graduating with a diploma from at least high school, a person should be able to read and write proper English. I believe that a person does need to know how to read and write in English because it’s the most known language in the U.S.A; person cannot work at a department store only knowing Chinese or Spanish, most people would not understand them. English is not a question of whether you want to learn it or not, it’s a matter of you have to learn it in order to survive. Even for college students, they did not make it to college not knowing English; they needed to develop their English skills in order to make it as far as college. C.S.Lewis wrote, “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”
When I was four and I started school, I was scared to attend I didn’t know what to expect. After a while I began to love school because all I really did was play with my friends. As I
Moreno 2
grew older I started to learn more and more English without even knowing it. We would learn it through songs we would sing and games we would play. After years of going to school I started to hate going to school because as the years past I got to play less and less until it got to the point where I didn’t get to play in class. I couldn’t play inside and I could only play for twenty minutes outside, it eventually got to the point where I sat in a desk for most of the day reading different books. I never thought about how I was having the privilege of learning English and other subjects for free. Children from other parts of the world can’t even go to school. Fredrick Douglas once wrote, “During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With these I learned mainly how to write.” Fredrick Douglas had to use other objects in order to learn how to read and write English.
Many kids don’t seem to fully understand how important it is to learn English and to take advantage of the free schooling provided. Even for those kids who graduate from high school, they don’t want to continue their studies and are okay with any job. The point for us as students is to be able to go further than our parents did to be able to achieve that feeling in life that we accomplished something. It is not an easy road but it is not an impossible one either, for some reason most kids now think it is too hard and so they will not go forth in education. We ourselves make it impossible for being lazy and not wanting to reach a little bit further. They probably believe since they know English they can work something out, and why stop there if you can make life just a bit easier by studying a little bit more. They can have the work they always wanted to work, they can work on something that they truly love to do.
Moreno 3
I believe English is a vital element for any person living in the US, without it people could not survive. When I go to the store they have people speaking English and another language, but their main language is English. A person cannot work at a department store and only speak another language that is not English. In this country we live in, the majority of people speak English; if a costumer were to ask for help and the employee only knew Chinese or Spanish then how would the costumer get what she needs? If the cashier at the cash register only understood Spanish then how would the customers’ pay for their things? Every single job has an English speaking role; the employees must know English to communicate with customers, other employees, and their bosses. During the Christmas season, such as Black Friday, if a customer has a heart attack or an accident happened where a customer is dying and the ambulance come and ask the employee what happened and the employee only knows Spanish what happens? There might be witnesses but you as an employee is responsible to get every detail of what happened what will you do? It is a very tough world out there and sometimes people don’t get what they want, not because they don’t want it but because they don’t try hard to get it.
I feel that we as humans have to try to surpass our own abilities and try to surpass our own learning abilities. Humans are known as unique creatures because we have the ability to do things other animals can’t, yet other animals aren’t as dumb as human beings. Animals are known to be at the bottom of the food chain and humans right on top, they are known to have more intelligence than us and I agree. When an animal feels danger it runs the opposite way, yet when a human feels danger it somehow goes towards it, how does that make sense? When the climate changes or the weather becomes really bad animals adapt to their environment in order to survive, we just put on some blankets and a heater and all we are doing is wasting electricity. Then again they don’t have to go to school or learn English and how to write, but I feel it’s the same situation as animals learning how to survive and humans learning to survive. Animals need to learn to adapt to their environment and they need to learn how to survive through different obstacles. I believe humans have to also; we have to learn how to survive on our own, if it means we learn English and be able to write it then so be it. Our brains and bodies are built to learn and grow, why not take advantage of what we have? Most of us might not be rich, we may be poor but we can become rich, we can become someone in life. My parents are poor, they don’t have brand new cars or expensive clothes but they did everything they could so that my sisters and I would live the life we live. I am attending California State University Northridge, I made it to a place no one believed I would make it to and yet here I am, writing an essay on English. English was a stepping stone to my now present day and it will continue to be throughout my future. I thank the people that taught me English, my teachers that helped me have the opportunity to be where I am. Thank you, English.
No comments:
Post a Comment