Still Remember the Moments: When I learned to read and write in Chinese and English
1 Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, #207-6715 Burlington Ave., Burnaby, BC V5H 3M8
I am a second year MA student in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. My research interests include language and literacy, literature, and literature teaching, discourse and stylistics, cultural literacy and identity. I have taught ESL/EFL students English at West China Teachers University (for two years) and Southwest University of Finance and Economics (for six years), in China.
Abstract
This paper, which employs a narrative method, draws upon my personal experiences of L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English) literacy acquisition through a particular era – China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, during which time regular schooling was interrupted. In this paper, I seek to illustrate that the process of acquiring literacy reflects the learner’s interactions situated in family experiences, historical events, and social, cultural, and political contexts. I thus argue that literacy is a social practice and that literacy acquisition and development take many forms, as they involve the practice of “lived through” experiences of the learner.
Keywords
- literacy acquisition
- Chinese
- English
- Cultural Revolution
- narrative method
- social practice
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