Month: September 2021

One Litercercy Sponsor I need to pay my respects to is my mother. Growing up in a Jewish / Israeli household but growing up as an American in a fully American school and atmosphere made learning the Hebrew language a little harder. But always hearing my parents speak to one another really helped me adopt the language much faster. If it wasn’t for my mom helping me with all my Hebrew homework I wouldn’t have learned how to read and write so perfectly that I do now. My mom grew up In the city of Ashdod in Isreal until she turned 20 and moved to the United States. By her being a true Israeli made it much easier to adopt such an amazing language. I’m proud to say that I’m lucky to speak 2 such amazing languages. My mom is definitely the main reason that I am a fluent Hebrew speaker today. Being able to speak fluent Hebrew helped me connect to many discourse communities.

When I spent my summer in Israel for the first time 3 years ago the language and fluency really helped me navigate and communicate with the locals. One thing I have realized when traveling to another country speaking the language can even prevent you from getting scammed as a tourist. Speaking 2 languages is a tool that has really helped me communicate with so many people that I have learned so much from. Furthermore, I am proud to say mom has been an amazing literacy sponsor.

An object that I believe captures my character is a book. The reason why I believe that a book is an object that would best represent myself is that a book is a mystery that unfolds through the pages within. The beginning of a book is a small taste of what the rest of the story holds. The saying goes that “You should not judge a book by its cover”, which is true because the cover is never the perfect representation of what surprises lie within. A book also loses its physical appearance over time and gets various marks as time passes. 

The way that this all represents me is that even if I might look a certain way or act a certain way if a person gets to know me and spends time around me, they would understand the type of person I am. The marks of a book would represent the hardship I have overcome in my life, and that even though things are up and down in my life, I still hold the same value as I always did. A book is something that a person can learn from. I believe with the hardships that I have experienced, even though I’m very young, I can teach others something that they wouldn’t have known before. A book is also something that a person reads to calm themselves down. It also exemplifies how I am an empathetic person who cares about the feelings of others.

One important literacy sponsor in my life is my grandfather. As I grew up with English as my first language, learning Hebrew and Judaic studies every day got difficult. Although these topics were a part of my schools’ dual curriculum, adapting to a whole new language was very hard, especially at a young age where I easily got frustrated, which made me detest the given topic. My grandfather was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel where his first language was Hebrew. When I would have trepidation translating something, he was always there to offer a clear explanation to what I was confused about. He often improved my vocabulary by providing me with useful tricks for memorizing words and grammar. He would sit with me when it came to writing paragraphs or essays all in Hebrew which got super overwhelming. Instead of hailing to glean information that may have not been accurate, my grandfather became my recourse and provided me with any information I needed. Ultimately, my grandfather really enhanced my learning of Judaism and Hebrew, and continues to do so to this day.     

         After coming to the United States, I was often struck by the sense of lag.  Back in China, I am an excellent student who is favorited by teachers. But since I came to the United States, I often feel tired because I can’t understand what the teacher says in class and I don’t know how to do my homework. I shut myself in my room and silently cry. One day after school, I could not help crying to my mother: “I feel so tired, I want to go back to China. I don’t have any friends here and I can’t understand what the teachers are saying. “My mother wiped my tears and then put on my coat and bring me downstairs to CLC (Chinese Learning Center).

         I was greeted by a girl who kindly handed me tissues and hot water. While waiting for mom to talk to the supervisor, the girl spoke up: “Are you ok? Let me know if you need any help. “I looked embarrassed. Shouldn’t I be crying? My mouth opened and closed, I wanted to talk to her, but I didn’t know how to respond to her, after all, my English was really limited. She seemed to see what I was thinking, gave me a gentle smile, and told my mother that she would help me with my homework every weekend, and that I could ask her if there was anything I didn’t understand in class.

         After that, I went to CLC every weekend, and she always arrived earlier than me. From the beginning, she waited for me at the door, and later I became extrovert, I would take the initiative to say hello to her first. I know she can speak Chinese, although she is not fluent, but she can, but from the beginning of our acquaintance she will never speak Chinese with me, most of the conversation is in English. Later, I realized that it was because I wanted to better fit into the environment. Since we were friends, I would not be timid and would not worry about my pronunciation and grammar mistakes. Every time she sees me, she asks, “How is your week? Did you understand what the teacher said in class? What homework are you struggling? How was your exam? “ I could only answer with YES and NO in the first two few weeks, but later I would share a lot with her about what happened in school. Even I didn’t realize that I was able to communicate with her without barriers, and I became a lot more cheerful and gradually saw myself who I thought was excellent before. She taught me a lot of things. Without her, I would still be a timid person, afraid of making mistakes and afraid to express myself. So she’s worthy my Literacy Sponsor.

Even though I never met him, Nishimura Hiroyuki has been a “literacy sponsor” for me in more ways than one. Hiroyuki is an “internet entrepreneur” who founded the most successful Japanese message board called 2channel and is now the administrator of 4chan, an English-language imageboard website. He has blown up on the Japanese inter-webs recently for his YouTube streams where he drinks beer and gives meaningless talks about the most random things. I’ve been listening to him a lot lately, and I have picked up a lot of “conversational” Japanese from him. That has been very helpful because most of my Japanese came from literature and casual day-to-day slang is one area that I was lacking at. 

He has introduced me many-many fun words like “guguru” — to Google something, or “disuru” — to diss someone, “kodomo beya ojisan/obasan” — a person over 30 who still lives with their parents, or “oya no sune wo kajiru” — “to bite on your parents’ knees” i.e. to be financially dependent on your parents (especially when referring to kodomo beya ojisan/obasan). [As you can see this is not the vocabulary you would encounter in books, so once again, it was very helpful]. Through listening to him so much I have also picked up his vocabulary and speaking mannerisms which helped to make my Japanese quite a bit more natural. On a side note, I just really like his personality. Like one time I remember he said something along the lines of “I don’t know if you know this guys, but everyone is going to die one day. And so anything that happens in your life won’t matter one day. And so that’s why I just play video games and watch movies for days on end.” What a lad.

1. Anxiety has impacted the way I write. At times it’s because I don’t know what to really say or answer a question. It can also be the fact that the time I was given was plenty enough but I still saved it till the end to try and cram it in. The way I plan on using Eickmeyer’s strategies and writing skills is by breaking down the assignment by parts and trying to work on each part slowly and efficiently.

2.   I have my School life but I also have the outside world. They collided when I had a performance at School. It was night time and some people that didn’t know the “School” version of me got to see it when I ran into teachers and had to do tasks and greet them all. I feel like a lot of people can relate to this and how we all kind of somewhat act different in school and that its pretty much its own world. Also there are some people that you just keep in the outside world and some at School. They never seem to collide but when they do its a interesting but usually pleasant experience.