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Adrika Rahim

Professor Jan Rieman

English 1101

8 February 2014

Literacy Memoir

Self-Assessment: I wanted to write a paper that really told my story. I structured it the way it is structured because I believe my points got across in a well thought out style that transitions well. While writing, there was a lot going through my mind that I wanted to write about. I believe that I successfully told my literacy life in this paper. While reading this paper, I hope you can get a better understand of who I am. I listened to my peers revisions. I thought that if they made it a point to notice and make a suggestion about something in my paper, then it was worth considering. All points were valid so I listened to all of them and made those changes.

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How do you spell your name? Write it out. I remember my mother asking me this at four years old. I never attended preschool, so it was just me and my mother, Maa, together all day, every day. I still remember how I spelt it: Udreecu. My name is spelled Adrika but pronounced Uh-dree-kuh, at least in English. But growing up learning how to read and write in English, you always learn to sound out your words. So I tried my best and I was able to spell out the sounds of my own name. I remember being proud of myself and as was Maa. She was impressed with my ability to sound it out. Yet she still giggled at the fact of how wrong I spelt it. Even then, she still hung my illustration on the refrigerator door. Maa then taught me the correct spelling of my name and how to write it. I still havent forgotten how I thought my name was spelt and I still havent thrown that paper away to this day. Its a reminder to me of how complicated the English language is and it is a good comparison factor for me to see how much my writing has improved since my childhood.

I technically am an ESL (English Second Language) child. As in technically I learned English as my second language. Which is technically true. Its all so technical because I dont actually consider myself as ESL child. ESL is a program offered in school to help those learning English as their second language. My nationality is Bengali. My parents were born and raised in Bangladesh and moved to America in 1987 when they got married. The official language of Bangladesh is

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Bangla. My parents are both fluent in speaking, reading and writing in Bangla. So English is definitely their second language. The reason why I am technically counted as ESL is because my parents taught my two older brothers and I Bangla at the same time they were teaching us English, which ironically was also the same time they were learning English better themselves. I feel like even going into kindergarten, I knew English much better than Bangla. I didnt learn to read and write in Bangla until I was in fourth grade. I just learned to speak it. When I started elementary school, there was a questionnaire my parents had to fill out and I had to go through tests to make sure I understood English well enough. Apparently I didnt do as well as they wanted me to, which is why I was considered ESL. But I think it was mainly because my thinking process is very logical. One thing I understood at a very young age is sentence structure. In Bangla, there is only one word to describe something. Most words only possess one true meaning. The language is very straight forward. While in English, sentence structure is a little more confusing. There are so many ways to say one thing. Even though we learn that a sentence must have a subject and predicate, there are still so many exceptions to that rule. I didnt exactly understand that much, but because I was learning two languages at the same time, I did notice differences when learning to translate. English was and is still my main language. Learning Bangla has always been more of a struggle for me, especially growing up in America where the language is so uncommon. My parents have always spoken and still speak to me in Bangla. But I have always responded in English. My thoughts are always in English and my initial response to

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anything is always in English, too. Being verbally fluent in two languages is very beneficial, but also has its disadvantages. I feel like learning Bangla has affected my development in English literacy because as I was learning to read and write in Bangla, the differences in the two languages were magnified. All the rules in English had so much importance while I was in school, but had no significance in Bangla. I still read and write Bangla at an elementary school level, but because learning English is so much more demanding, I havent found the time to continue to learn Bangla. So learning English has affected my Bangla literacy, also. But, by being bi-lingual, my eyes are more open to the usage and differences between languages. Growing up, I really excelled at reading and writing because of such exposures.

Literacy is a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among a group of people. The culture I grew up with is being a Bengali girl living in America. My parents taught me all the traditions and culture of Bangladesh. That included traditional Bengali dancing. I learned to dance at three years old. We had a little Bengali community where I grew up, so I knew many other people who shared the same culture as me. One of my moms friends had a daughter who was much older than me. This girl was a great dancer. So one day, Maa asked her to teach me to dance (even though Maa already learned to dance when she was a child). This girls name was Shaji. Out of respect, I called her Shaji Apu. Apu translated to English means

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something along the lines of sister-like respective elder. I still keep in touch with her to this day, but she is no longer my dance teacher. Dancing was a form of literacy to me. I had to learn this new style of moving. Bengali dancing is very interpretive. Every movement, position and facial expression has a deeper meaning behind it. Learning all these correlations was its own challenge and made me feel like I was learning a new language. This new language correlated with the songs. The songs I learned to dance to would vary from deep romantic songs to very pop-like songs. Every song also had its own meaning, so the dance had to match the song. I was never one to choreograph these dances because of the complex language. Shaji Apu always did that. She is my main dance literacy sponsor. The culture of dance varied from the way you would move, to how you spoke and the way you dressed. I had to learn what each movement meant and when I was told to do this specific dance movement, I had to demonstrate it. When Shaji Apu wanted me to choreograph or show her my own dances, I had to figure out how to make sure the choreography matched the music. This was a difficult task, but Ive learned over the years. The last variable of dance literacy is the apparel. The culture of dance practice attire was sweatpants or spandex basically anything where you were comfortable and could move in. But during dance performances, we wore traditional clothing attire. This was the literacy of dance. It is my third fluent language.

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Second grade was probably the year I excelled most in Language Arts. I was a grade level ahead in reading. I enjoyed reading more at that point in my life. Teachers didnt force us to read boring books and writing had much more creativity. I give most of the credit for my skills to my brothers. My eldest brother is seven years old than me. I call him Bhaiya, which is the respective word for a brother-like elder. Growing up, I didnt really know that wasnt his real name and that is just because of my cultural literacy. My second eldest brother is two years older than me. His name is Tanzeem. I didnt call him by the respective term because we were so close in age and he was more of a friend than a respective elder to me. They both taught me to read and write more than my parents were able to. I remember I had this Clifford the Big Red Dog book that I absolutely loved. Before Tanzeem started going to school, Bhaiya would read that book to the both of us. I learned to read because of that book. Bhaiya would teach Tanzeem how to read and in the process, I would always be sitting down watching them and then eventually I learned to read myself, of course with the guidance of my brothers. I learned to read from that Clifford book. Because both of my brothers are older than me, they learned new literacy ahead of me. So once they would learn a new style of writing, they would come home and teach me. Any time I had papers to write, I made sure to

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get at least one of the two of them to edit my papers. We all three have very similar writing styles because our literacy skills all developed on the same track. Even when it comes to reading, the three of us read in similar environments and at similar paces. Our biggest difference is that I read best in the car, but that was also influenced by my brothers. When Bhaiya learned to drive and we actually owned a car, he would take Tanzeem and I out all the time, even when we had homework. His rule was, though, that we had to bring our homework with us. I was in middle school at that point, so I had a lot more reading assignments. I learned to read in the car. Now, that is my most effective reading environment. I believe while reading, you need to picture what is happening. But if youre in a moving vehicle while reading, then those pictures start to move. Essentially this created a moving picture effect a movie. I really enjoy movies, so that is why I really enjoy reading in the car. This is how my reading literacy developed. Tanzeem is the one who introduced me to writing with music. His advice was to always listen to songs I dont know the lyrics to and to use headphones and blast the music. He mainly gave me this advice when I started high school. At first I found it challenging. After continuing to try his advice out, I have finally mastered this skill. I believe that when writing, you use all your creativity and imagination. You are basically pulling thoughts and words out from your own world. Music stimulates creativity and can always put you in a mood. A mood that can stimulate the creative world that will help you write your paper. And the use of headphones is to block out any distractions from the real world. This is my writing literacy development and how it is even to

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this day. My brothers were the most significant overall literacy sponsors and have had the most impact on me. I really owe them the credit.

Literacy usually pertains to the ability to read and write and your understanding of each. We all have developed our literacy in different ways and each have different styles. Our past is what shapes our futures. All of these past events have helped me develop into the writer/reader I am today. I can trace back all my success and improvement to these situations Ive gone through. This is why I write and read the way I do now and makes me unique from others.

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Adrika,

Interesting stuff! I do indeed get a better sense of who you are.

You do a great job of recognizing your multiple literacies here and one of the strongest parts of this memoir is your analysis and reflection on your fluency in two languages. Id say the weakest part is how you are everything is not as tied together as cohesively as it could be. Its pretty fluid until the last little part.

Here are some ideas to consider in revision: think about what you are trying to show here. It seems like you want to show your various sponsorsparents, school, brothers, dance teacher, etc. And you want to recognize your multiple literacies with a particular piece of attention on your bi-lingualism. Sohow best to lead your reader back out of your memoir? You dont nec. need to summarize. You could look forward, too. In addition to thinking more about the ending, how can you smooth out that shift from dance to second grade? See my marginal comments for other thoughts. Im happy to talk through this in person as well.

Please write a talk back.

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Professor Rieman,

Thank you for all the suggestions and revisions of my paper. I felt like I had a strong paper up until my conclusion, which I know can ruin an entire paper. I will revise this paper and edit for myself to help me for my own benefit. Your comments were really helpful. Im glad you enjoyed my essay and have a better sense of who I am now! Thanks again!

Adrika Rahim