OPEN ENDED QUESTION

Instructions: Please respond to the questions that follow with as much detail and description that you can. The more you put into reflecting now on the complexities of your language and literacy development, the better off you’ll be in completing our major assignment for our first phase of this course. Take as much space as you need.

When it comes to your experiences with language (speaking and listening) and literacy (reading and writing), what specific moments in your life can you recall that are particularly vivid or that emerge as being significant to you? Yes, it could be an example from your earliest memories of learning to speak, read, and write (in school or elsewhere), but it doesn’t have to be. It could be a memorable encounter—a moment of tension, confusion, or triumph. It could be about experiences developing additional dialects/languages and advanced literacies (i.e., learning to speak/write in different peer groups, at school, at work, with family, online, in different locations across the nation or world, etc. Please select 3 moments to describe. Then, explain why each is interesting or significant.

I think I have a good personal story to tell. I used to work as an aircraft technician in the Royal Jordanian Air Force. In 2014, I decided to change something in my life to get a B.A degree. I applied for the university and after one year of struggling to get the approval to start a degree, they told me the only major compatible with my career was English language and literature which was the option I even did not list, not because I do not like the English language, but rather it is because I cannot even remember the English letters. Having no other option, I started studying eight – to ten hours daily so I could fill the gap and enhance my English competence with myself.   I remember that I was really scared of the professor asking me to stand and tell the English letters for the first semester. To make a long story short, I decided to start participating in the classroom and break the ice, which was the toughest period in my academic life. The students could not hold themselves from laughing at my language – do not blame them- my language was horrible as I used to hear myself when recording the lectures to summarize them later.  What made it worse was my mental status, not only my language, but, also, it was that feeling I was not smart enough to speak English. Well! It happens that I graduated with an excellent G.P.A. and I was listed on the honor board more than 4 times on the college level and once on the university level.  After that, I got admitted to the rank 1 university in Jordan, The University of Jordan, with an M.A. degree in linguistics, from which I graduated with a higher excellent G.P.A. After all of that, I believe there is still too much to learn about the English language, yet my passion is with engineering.

What specific materials or artifacts (i.e., objects, writing, learning materials, pictures, video recordings, etc.) from your past can you locate/recall and that in some way represent a meaningful moment in your reading/writing development? This can be something like a journal or book, but also anything at all (e.g., a toy, piece of furniture, cereal box, art supplies, etc.) What memories and feelings can you extract from these examples you’ve gathered/recalled? Explain.

I was thinking it was possible for me until I took the course of introduction to literature. The whole semester, we had to analyze the Wuthering Heights novel, which I fully analyzed and fully understood. After reading WH, I read The Scarlet letter, Great Gatsby, Arabian nights, the Fault in Our Stars, and others.

For better or worse, who and what impacted how, when, and why you developed your languages and literacies? Who in your family, at school, among your peer group, or in your community played a part? How did your particular situation or experience shape your literacy? That is, what sorts of issues, experiences, organizations, or life circumstances played a part? What kinds of languages and literacies did you gain from those people and your particular situation? How? Why? Explain.

It has always been the same for me, I do not want to die a number, I was dying a name; this is what gives me the motivation to move forward and pave the way for me, hopefully one day I will do something worthwhile. By the way, my father used to tell me “get married and have children in this way you will not die a number, your children will hold your name”, maybe he is right maybe not.

In what ways do you see your language, reading, and writing capabilities as having social consequences or impacting your life circumstances—that is, what advantages did/do you have and what disadvantages did/do you face as a result of your language and literacy learning?

My reading and writing skills are a blessing. In other words, I am sure that I could not achieve anything in this life without the lingua franca. Writing helped me a lot in my previous job, such as writing emails. Also, reading helped me expand my knowledge, so it does impact personality in terms of intellectuality.

How might your experience with language and literacy connect to larger social realities (e.g., of your life, family, generation, gender, race, culture, nation, geographic location, historical moment, etc.)?

It is well connected to my social life. In the family, I am the one who corrects my brothers’ emails and helps them get better grades in courses. In addition, my friends speak English as a first language which I believe is far better than me (for now), but when it comes to reading and writing, they ask me to do that for them. On the large scale, I feel like everything I am doing is connected to these skills and without them I definitely can do nothing.