My Linguistic History

Writing as a child was never really hard, from what I remember I caught on to both reading and writing fairly quickly compared to my peers. The tasks that the teachers would have us do in school were simple exercises such as writing our letters, names, addresses, and eventually forming short sentences. I never wrote much in my childhood, although one memory I do have of writing is sitting with my father and him making me write my alphabet over and over so I would have it just right for school the next day.



Since I was able to write and read at an early age, I don't really have an memory of either of them being a challenge for me. For as long as I can remember I have always had a book in my hand. As a young child I would always wait for family visits so that I could have a "new" person to read to me. As I grew older, I remember grabbing 2-3 Baby sitter's Club books and heading to the pool for the day, coming home after reading every single page. For the most part , I've always enjoyed reading. It never really mattered what I was actually reading, just that I had SOMETHING to read. I remember reading teenage novels at the age of probably 10 years old, not being able to wait to get my hands on a new edition of a magazine, and even simple things such as reading the labels on the back of household products.

In the past, I was never really interested in writing. As a young girl, I kept a journal about silly things that probably maker no real difference in my life today. It felt more like a chore to write in my journal every day rather than a therapy method that I use it for now. I just recently began to keep a journal but I have changed what writing in my journal means to me. I don't make it so that I have to write in my journal every day, only when I feel the need to write and to get things off of my mind. As part of my English 101, I was expected to write a 20 page grand narrative. The subject was left up to us as individuals to choose for ourselves. It ended up being a piece of writing that I value now, because it was a story about more or less the last few years of my life. Besides my journal, I use writing in my every day life. I write emails once to twice a week, use AOL Messenger to keep in touch with friends from high school, and write at least 100 text messages a day. I have never been expected to write letters, formal or informal, outside of school.

Growing up, I was surrounded by my family, friends, and teachers. I attended a Catholic School that had high expectations in it's students and our writing. In 5th grade we began to do yearly projects where we were expected to pick a historical event and eventually make a skit about it. Although it seems like an easy task, it took a lot of effort. The project included going to college campus libraries, indexing and using past magazine articles, writing bibliography cards for each fact used by our group, and then writing an overall paper. In the overall paper we had to include each bibliography reference that we had found, sometimes reaching into the hundreds and triple alphabetic filing. In the classroom, it was usually a very formal atmosphere. Formal speaking, formal actions, formal reading and writing. Outside of the classroom, my friends and family were both laid back and informal in their speech and writing. I feel as if the expectations placed on me at a young age helped in my transformation of formally speaking and writing.

I have been taking Spanish as a second language since the age of 5, starting in kindergarten. I have always caught myself trying to say things in English and then translate them to Spanish. I feel as if two languages should cooperate with each other, if it says something in English it should say the exact same thing in Spanish. Obviously, that would have been to easy because anyone that has taken Spanish knows that the words don't always mean the exact same thing and the structures of sentences are generally different when comparing English to Spanish.