My Literacy Development

My literacy and language development began at home. Though I cannot quite remember the initial structure of my language, I do recall my mother praising the way I spoke as a thing of beauty. Though from a culture of people who often discard lingual appropriateness when speaking, my family on one that is comprised of speakers bordering both sides – those who use “correct” and “incorrect” English. Within my household, it was a common requirement to use “correct” English and grammar staying away from “improper” language, such as the word “ain’t”. My mother is one who spoke in a similar way to my own while my father, having been born and raised in the South, spoke with a “southern accent”. He became the model of how not to speak which trickled down into which subjects he would help me with when doing homework. An electrical engineer by profession, my father was responsible for assisting me with learning math, science, and history (a subject he’s always loved). My mother would assume the role of Language Arts/English guru. An excellent writer, she had a strong demand of English conventions (grammar, composition, and literature).

It is through my family that I became aware of language structures which I learned to classify as “correct” or "incorrect”. We would often poke fun at my father when he used language outside of our familiar grammatically correct realm. Though around him since birth, his use of “incorrect English” never ceased to surprise me. His speech became my lifelong model of how not to speak while my mother’s language festered within me as “correct” - being virtually error free. Though often falling victim to the incorrect conventions of language, my father had an extensive vocabulary which I would draw upon for new words to look up in the dictionary and begin to practice.