My Literacy Narrative- Nicholas Vetri

From an early age I have always had an interest in words and expressing myself. I was

able to speak from the time I was one year old, and no one could shut me up by the

time I was 2 or 3. My father is a lawyer, and a reader, and someone who is very

interested in big words. I think his interest in words has always shown me how language

is interesting.

As a little kid, both of my parents would spend a lot of time helping me with my

homework and reading to me. I also went to a good school district in Long Island, New

York, and I only ever remember having really great, supportive teachers (with the

exception of a couple of the nuns I had when I went to a Catholic elementary school).

For my whole K-12 studies, I always loved to learn and got very good grades. My

teachers were always supportive and they encouraged me a lot as I went on. Eventually

I even moved on AP classes in high school and they taught me that I was capable of a

good amount of discipline and time management skills. After the two AP literature

classes I took in highschool, I found out that I really loved reading literature, and I

started to think that I could find all the answers to the most important questions in life

through reading.

In high school I was also in several bands. I was the singer and songwriter in each of

them. I wrote a lot of songs and I found out that even though I wasn’t great at it, I was
better than my friends at it. From this time on, writing music, lyrics, and poetry has

become a permanent part of my life.

I don’t think I really started reading outside of school assignments until I was in

highschool. For some reason, at that time I thought that I ought to read the great,

tedious, difficult, works of classic literature. I ended up reading a lot of Dickens and

other British authors from the 19th century, and even though they were difficult, and I

enjoyed reading them a lot.

When I got to university, I became an avid reader. I changed my major several times,

but I took a literature class each semester pretty much without fail. I ended up taking

classes on literature from several different regions and disciplines including Latin

America, Old English, Gender Studies, Franco-African Literature, 20th Century French

Literature, Japanese Buddhism, and others. I also did a lot of reading and writing

outside of class and had dreams to be a writer. I think reading has made me a much

more curious and interested person, and hopefully therefore a more interesting person.

I changed my major several times in university from a psychology major to a philosophy

major to a journalism major and finally to a French language and literature major. They

are all majors that gave me a chance to develop my literacy in different directions and I

learned a lot of interesting things. After changing my major to French language and

literature I had a love affair with the French language ( I don’t know if that sounds

cheesy but…) I learned French really quickly and I loved every minute of it.
I can say with confidence that learning French has made me someone who understands

what my students go through when learning English as a foreign language. It has also

given me more of an eye for English grammar. I think it also gave me more confidence

and familiarity with the process when learning my third language, Mandarin Chinese.

Finally, after graduating from university, I moved to China to teach English. After moving

here, I have spent a lot of time learning Mandarin Chinese. I think that studying Chinese

is really difficult for two reasons. The first is that Chinese characters are all unique

arrangements of pictures and strokes, with many of them having more than 20 strokes.

It takes probably 2-3 times longer to learn a Chinese character than a word from an

alphabetic language, and it’s much easier to forget where a stroke goes. The second

reason is that English and Chinese come from totally different language families and

have very little in common and few loan words between them (unlike Japanese or

Korean who have many English loan words). When learning Chinese, you are basically

learning everything from scratch in a language that is totally non-intuitive to English

speakers. To put this in perspective, the U.S. State Department, through research on

how long it takes for native English speakers to reach high proficiency in languages

estimates that it is possible to reach high proficiency in French in 600-750 class hours

spread over 30 weeks, whereas takes 88 weeks and around 2200 class hours to reach

the same proficiency in Mandarin Chinese, that’s about 3 times as long (U.S. State

Department, n. d.). I’ve studied Mandarin for 5 years, and a lot of my Chinese friends

tell me that my Chinese is quite good, but it’s far from advanced fluency. The upside of
this is that it has made me much more empathic with my students’ English learning

journey. While I think it is somewhat harder for English speakers to learn Mandarin than

the reverse (due to the difficulty of learning Chinese characters), it is still a significant

challenge to learn a language that is so fundamentally different. When they see me

struggle to explain something in Chinese, it also lets them know that we are all going

through the same learning process, and that there’s nothing wrong with making

mistakes in learning language.

References:

U.S. State Department. (n.d.). Foreign Language Training. U.S. State Department.

Retrieved from: https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/

Reflection-

What commonalities can you identify across peer literacy narratives? What is the same and what are

some differences about the process of learning to read and of becoming literate? How might you use

this self-awareness in your approach to teaching reading to multilingual learners? Be sure to make

connections between your claims about your personal literacy development and the claims made by

others.

What commonalities can you identify across peer narratives?

I would say that the main commonality is that learning to read is difficult for everyone, and there are

always moments where learners find themselves struggling, but it’s the support of the adults in their

lives that hopefully gets them through this difficult process. I remember when I was in elementary

school learning to read was quite strenuous, tiring and sometimes even painful. It took so much
encouragement from a lot of people in my life to get me through that initial process and to even

enjoy it somewhat. The other commonality is the kindness that everyone had from their parents and

teachers. In each literacy narrative, the parents and teachers went above and beyond to support the

learners. This is something to keep in mind when helping any student in the literary process. You are

giving them the support they need to get over one of the most difficult and important hurdle of their

academic careers.

What is the same and what are some differences about the process of learning to read and of

becoming literate?

I would say that the main difference is that becoming literate is a muli-faceted process that involves

all of the domains of language learning. It includes the skills necessary to read like phonological

awareness, word recognition, decoding, etc., but also skills necessary for deep understanding of

language such as print awareness, print motivation, narrative skills, and knowledge of grammar. In

includes a deep understanding and certain culture, whereas reading is a narrower skill.

How might you use this self-awareness in your approach to teaching reading to multilingual

learners? Be sure to make connections between your claims about your personal literacy

development and the claims made by others.

I think the biggest takeaway from reading these literacy narratives and writing my own is that reading

is one of the most difficult and important things a child learns to do in their school career. It has

impacts that will affect the rest of students’ lives. The success of students learning to read not only

depends on effective pedagogy, but also on students’ support structure going above and beyond and

giving a lot of their time to guide students through this journey.

Reading has been so many things to me. A life-long teacher, a friend, and fuel for endless curiosity.

Reading through these literacy narratives made me reflect for a moment and consider the debt of

gratitude I owe to dozens of people in my life for helping me along in this skill. Keeping this in mind, I

think that when teaching young learners, or students adding an additional language, teaching

reading is one of the most important and impactful things we do as educators. I will try to keep this

feeling in mind when I teach students in the future.

The other important takeaway I had when thinking through this assignment is that there is so

much we can do to encourage students to become lifelong readers and lifelong learners. I think that

I will try to do my best to find ways to make reading accessible and interesting for students with that

goal in mind. Some ways I would do that are reading to students when they may seem a little to old

to be read too like Mrs. Williams in Rhonda’s literacy narrative, maybe spending more time on

reading instruction instead of smart board games or other kinds of convenient class breaks, and by

choosing materials that are pique students’ curiosity and are within their zones of proximal

development.