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Jose Modesto
Professor Doutherd
English 5M
November 27, 2017
Becoming Multilingual

As a son of Mexican parents, I have been through the process of learning a new language.
My sponsors, the people who have made it possible for me to become literate in English, shaped
my identity. This happened by giving me the opportunity to learn English and giving me the
strategies I needed to learn. Most multilingual students struggle to learn new languages because
they dont have sponsors helping them along. In my experiences, when learning how to write and
read, I had people who would help me with my English. My sponsors would be my teacher's,
sister, and friends who would always teach me new strategies when learning English which
would end up shaping my literacy to how it is today.Their support led me to create my own
process which I call the growing of the leaves, which is taking their instruction and continuing
to practice.
Anybody can be a sponsor. According to Deborah Brandt, sponsors are figures who
bankroll events or smooth the way for initiates (Deborah Brandt, p.47).This means that a
sponsor can make the process of learning a new language easier for a multilingual student.
Sponsors conducted my learning from the information they gave me, making me learn the basics.
Just like a gardener in a garden does when watering a seed that would later become into a strong
tree, sponsors contribute by giving their time and experience to reinforce multilingual learning.
In my experience, sponsors have given me the tools needed to learn how to write and read in
English.
My sponsors did helped me by showing me the importance of strategies and how helpful they
could be for me. The strategies taught for me to learn were strategies like reading out loud,
writing short sentences for me to write longer in the future, and forms of reading detailed
readings by reading the sentence more than once to see what the point talks about. Since they
were all really smart, I thought that using some of their vocabulary would make me as smart as
them which was another strategy I took from them. Having such great sponsors was an immense
support I received also motivating me to preserver in my exposure of English courses.
To begin with, when I was in first grade I did not know any English at all either reading or
writing it. My teacher saw that I was not progressing with my English, so she decided to give me
simple homework where all I had to do was to write three-word sentences. I would go home
every day and would start my homework around four, and would finish around seven trying to
pronounce the words as carefully as I could. The teacher saw my improvement and would make
me write longer sentences shaping what I call the stem of my English because she introduced me
to writing a new language. As a gardener does by giving the plant shade and providing it the
water needed to grow, my teacher provided me with the information I need it to learn. She taught
me the basics by giving me the tools need it like reading logs and assignments for writing.
Having such an amazing teacher as a sponsor made me feel important, so I continued to work
hard.
Luckily, at home, my oldest sister would always make me read. Second grade was more
about math, which was very easy for me. However, when I got to third grade, everything got
serious again. I would read for twenty minutes in order to complete a reading log that all third
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graders were assigned. Reading logs were actually very hard for me because I was a slow reader,
and would have difficulties in understanding the readings. Every time, I would read in class
aloud, since I was a slow reader the teacher would cut me off and called other students to read
for me. Reading in front of the class would make me uncomfortable because my English was not
good at all.
Problems with me learning the language were very noticeable when I spoke because my
accent kept appearing; therefore, the teacher told my mom. Just like Anne Lamott said Im
ruined which I was since I thought my mom be mad, but she understood(Anne Lamott, p. 529).
She made my sister make me read out loud to her while doing my reading for the reading logs.
By reading out loud, I was growing the small leafs since I knew the sound of every word and the
basics which stood for as the stem of the tree. My sister would stop me each time I pronounced a
word wrong and helping me out pronouncing it to eliminate my Spanish accent. I kept reading
trying to improve my speaking. It was until I was in seventh grade when I noticed that all the
reading I had done, not only improved my speaking but my reading skills very significantly.
Finally, I called this next process the growing of the leaves because learning to write was the
stem. Now that I knew how to read and write, it was just a matter of practice and the leafs would
be the improvement done shaping not only my skills but my identity as well. Speaking English
with my friends and reading to them and them reading to me would help me a lot. I would read
soccer magazines to my friends to find out about new players in the team we cheered for. This
activity made me read every detail about the transfer. Knowing how to read very detailed texts
helped me in school exams by understanding instructions as well. The key to getting good grades
in exams was to understand what was asked. The key to reading the detailed parts for exams and
readings was to reread the same sentence or the instructions more than once and see if the words
next to it would help as well.
Clearly, you can see that there are steps that form ones identity and shape ones literacy
skills over time. In my case, the first thing was to get the stem ready for the leafs to grow. This
was a process that I was taught from my father a day that he took me to work with him when I
was around seven years old. He told me that if I did not wanted to work like him that I had to
learn like a tree, from the stem which is knowing the basics to the leafs where I learn by myself
new strategies.There are many forms of learning a different language, and from my experiences I
can say that learning how to write first really helped me when learning how to read which made
me a multilingual person. Sponsors do help when learning a new language (which for me was
English), and I thank them all until today, because they gave me part of their valuable time.
Being multilingual really affected me, but I am overcoming this problem everyday with the help
of those who offer their time to help me, and who I call sponsors.
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Jose Modesto
Professor Doutherd
English 5M
November 27, 2017

Literacy Narrative Cover Letter

To begin with, on my course goals I met the goal of exploring a writers identity in
relation to the politics of language. In the meeting of this goal, my first language which is
Spanish, contributed by giving me an accent when I tried to speak English. This is something
very hard to avoid because in Spanish, we pronounce words a lot different. As a writer, I learned
about myself the importance of thinking something in Spanish and writing it the same exact way,
but in English.
I had problems when doing my first two drafts because I did not know most of the words in
English as how I was thinking about in Spanish, so I started to develop more on my vocabulary
by reading. Editing was something I did a lot since my short vocabulary led me to repeat words
over and over again. I also learned how to incorporate personal ideas in my writings by
comparing what something is saying to past experiences of mine. Correcting personal ideas
during the second draft was very difficult because I was not able to see my mistakes at first, but
after rereading them more than once, everything became a lot simpler.
Something that really went well during the process of writing my Literacy Narrative was
the order in which the events happened They really accommodated to the style in which I wanted
my essay to be in since the first draft. In my Literacy Narrative, I explain everything as how time
passed for me year after year just like a timeline about me. If I were to do my essay again, I
would change the style of my wording to a fancier one. During the process of doing the third
draft, I corrected a bunch of repeated words to synonyms that would work just the same. In my
opinion, fancier words sound better to the audience by making writings like mine a bit more
elegant without having to repeat words. This will affect my future writing assignments by
choosing more carefully my word usage to a more elaborate one where I get my ideas clearly to
my audience and by incorporating more words.
Finally, I think that this essay is ready for my ePortfolio since I have
accommodated to the assignment instructions. Having more than one draft really help as well
because I went over and over the essay more than once, correcting grammar errors and including
more ideas to backup my information. Trying out different quotes was also something I analyzed
a lot because I wanted them to flow just as good as my experiences with becoming multilingual
did. Writing in the correct format was something that was fair since I have written in this format
more than once.
Questions to Consider:
How elaborated/developed is the writing timewise?
Is the writing clear enough or does it need more details?

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