Philip Yang

ENGL 133

Dr. Jason Peters

5 October 2017

The Story of My Bilingualism

"How is your Chinese so good?" people would ask me after hearing me speak Chinese. "I

speak Mandarin with my parents at home, that's all," I usually reply. Although my response is

true to an extent, it doesn't tell the whole story of my fluency in the two languages. I am bilingual

today thanks to the efforts of my parents, and because of them I had the chance to become a

literacy sponsor for others as well.

My parents immigrated here from Taiwan in hopes of a good life for their children, just

like the countless other immigrants from every corner of the world. My dad studied at graduate

school in Texas before he married my mom in Taiwan, and together they moved to the US. They

came here with their limited English education they had in Taiwan, but slowly they learned to

speak more and more fluently as they spent more time in the US. They lived in Houston for a

while, moved to New Jersey for a few years, and finally settled on the other side of the nation in

California to start a family. After buying a home in a suburban city called Fremont, my mom had

a pair of twins on May 21, 1999. They were named Joseph and Philip.

Before having my brother and me, my parents had an important decision to make. They

could either have the language at home be Chinese or English. Some of our older cousins who

also grew up here in the US had a hard time with English in their early elementary school years,

and the teachers there attributed their struggle to the fact that they spoke Chinese at home.
Knowing of my cousins' experiences, my parents were hesitant to make Mandarin the home

language. In the end, they chose to speak Mandarin to us because they knew that being bilingual

was going to be a huge advantage for us as we grew older, and I cannot thank them enough for

their decision.

As a result, the first language I ever learned was Chinese. From the very beginning, my

parents spoke only Mandarin to my brother and me, and we absorbed it like a dry sponge. It was

the only language we knew with the exception of bits and pieces of English. Being the Chinese

teacher that she is, my mom would read books to us and sing to us in Mandarin. As we grew up,

I distinctly remember my mom correcting my brother and me when we would say a word in the

wrong tone or forget to roll our tongues. In Mandarin, there are 4 distinct tones to every sound,

and each tone is a separate word. Words can also sound similar but mean different things

depending on whether or not you roll your tongue when you say it. Its ch fn (rolled tongue),

not c fn (unrolled tongue), my mom would tell me when I said to eat in Mandarin

incorrectly. I want to eat shu jio (3rd tone), not I want to eat shu jio (4th tone), she would

correct my brother when he mispronounced the Mandarin word for dumplings and accidently

say, I want to eat sleep instead. Slowly but surely, our pronunciation became more and more

precise until we could speak Mandarin fluently. To this day, my brother and I still communicate

with our parents in Mandarin.

During the last two summers, I had the chance to volunteer as an English teacher in rural

Taiwan. Both Jonathan Kozol in his article Still Separate, Still Unequal and Diane Ravitch in

her article The Facts About the Achievement Gap argue that there is a serious achievement gap

between white and minority students in the United States, and a similar education gap exists in

the education system of Taiwan. When the Han Chinese migrated from China to Taiwan around
400 to 500 years ago, they forced the indigenous people of Taiwan up into the mountains while

they settled in the more level and inhabitable parts of Taiwan. The native Taiwanese people were

oppressed by the Han Chinese for hundreds of years, similar to how African-Americans have

been historically oppressed in America. As a result, the aboriginal Taiwanese people tend to be

economically disadvantaged today, leading to poorer quality education in their local schools

compared to schools in urban Taiwan.

I taught English to some of these indigenous Taiwanese middle schoolers in the

mountains of rural Taiwan. We, a group of volunteers from my church, worked with Taiwanese

university students to organize a camp during the summer where the students could go for

classes. This is a big help to the students because many of their families are not able to afford

tutors, so struggling students often do not have the resources they need to succeed. My fluency in

Chinese was essential in teaching English because I had to talk to my students in Chinese so they

could understand me. It also helped in our communication with the Taiwanese volunteers whom

we lived with for the duration of the camp.

When I first started teaching English, my students were all very shy and timid. Whenever

I asked the whole class to say a word with me, they were willing to take part. When I asked for

individual volunteers, however, they were afraid to participate because they felt embarrassed by

their broken English. Our goal was to boost their confidence in speaking English and help their

conversational skills grow, but it was difficult to help them because of their insecurities. As the

first week of teaching came to a close, I felt frustrated and asked for help from my more

experienced friend. She told me that I should not think of myself as only their teacher; I could

learn a lot from them as well. With that advice in mind, I told my students the following

Monday, We can be each others teachers; Ill teach you English, and you can teach me
Chinese. After telling them that, my students finally started to open up and participate more.

Even the shyest students spoke up during class. Over the course of the three weeks, their

confidence in speaking English improved greatly, and I was very proud of them. I realized that to

be a good teacher, I first had to be willing to learn from my students.

I am truly grateful for my loving parents' decision to expose me to their native language

from the very beginning and raise me in a country that is filled with so much opportunity.

Thanks to them, I am who I am today: a bilingual, first generation Taiwanese-American.

Because of my bilingualism, I was able to become a literacy sponsor for my students in Taiwan.

When I have children of my own, I hope to a literacy sponsor for them so that they can grow up

to be bilingual just like me.