A is for apple…, Z is
for zebra
In
comparison to the article by Shirley Brice Heath, my early language acquisition
was probably most like the description of Maintown, but I also have memories
similar to the descriptions of Roadville and Trackton. As Ms. Heath discussed, much depends on your
home life and your community. My mom’s
parents are both university graduates—my grandma was a librarian and my grandpa
was a university professor. Conversely,
my dad’s parents were farmers (my grandmother is from Oklahoma and is
ethnically Native American, Irish, and Welsh; and my grandfather is a
first-generation Danish farmer—neither of them have more than a high school
education, or a terrific grasp of the rules of the English language). Like the Maintown example, my parents and my
mom’s parents reinforced grammar and annunciation by modeling and providing
feedback in the form of correcting my speech when I said something
incorrectly. I do not ever remember my
parents using baby talk, and after talking with my mom, I know they
purposefully talked to my brothers and I using ‘proper’ English grammar, and
worked with us as soon as we were talking to pronounce words correctly by
sounding them out.
My dad’s
parents, on the other hand, were much more like the Trackton example; they
spoke mostly with adults and when they did talk to me or my brothers it was
often in the form of a story, but for the most part they were not very actively
engaged with my learning how to speak, read, or write. To this day, my grandma, on my dad’s side,
pronounces California as ‘Cal-i-forny’ and Colorado as ‘Call-a-rad-a.’ They both are great story-tellers, and have
always had a knack for stretching the truth in a fun sort of way—the same way
in which you might try to embellish a story, or make up something ludicrous
while trying to maintain a poker face.
I grew up on
a crop and dairy farm in the Midwest.
The community was made up of a town of about 1200 people surrounded by
small farms. My dad was a math
teacher/farmer and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. Before going to school, I remember learning
how to speak before learning how to read and write. Some of my first interactions with language
were learning the alphabet; I remember my parents and grandparents showing me
cards with pictures of animals, trees, cars, etc. with the word representing
the picture below it. In order to
memorize my ABC’s, I was taught to repeat them in a sing-song sort of way that
is probably typical of many other people in this class. I also remember mimicking, or repeating each
word after my parents or grandparents said them. Similar to the Maintown example in our
reading, I remember taking walks around the farm or in town and having my
parents or grandparents (on my mom’s side) name something and then have me
repeat it back to them. They also read
books with me; pointing their finger at each word, or parts of words as they
read aloud, and then had me repeat them. I also recall learning to sing along to basic
songs or nursery rhymes, like ring-around-the-rosy and Peter, Peter pumpkin
eater.
Before
starting school, my interactions with other kids consisted mostly of family,
but I did go to Sunday school, and took swimming and skiing lessons. So I did have some experience communicating
in situations that prepared me for the classroom environment. By the time I started kindergarten I had
learned my ABC’s, how to count to 100, and was able to read and write my name
and a few other basic words. As for
making sense, I believe my dad’s parents instilled a bit of their ‘fish-story’
like sense of humor in me because I remember just making things up when
teachers asked questions that I had no clue as to what the right answer
was. Looking back, I believe this has
helped me over the long run to make inferences, be creative and make the
infamous ‘educated guess.’
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