Literacy narrative development and personal experience

¶ … father told me for the third time. It was a sunny week-end during my high school days in Saudi Arabia but the conversation we were having in our humid living room was even more intense than the desert heat. I was constantly asking my father whether I could go to the United Kingdom (UK) to attend summer schools there -- I was really eager to learn more about the English language.

"This is my chance Dad!" I argued in Arabic -- Arabic was the primary language we spoke at home those days. "The King Oxford's School in UK offers an intensive English course there for summer schools. You know how much it is important for me to study English," I continued.

My dad paused for a while, gently putting down the newspaper he was reading. I waited nervously for the next words that will come out of his mouth, eagerly looking straight in his tired eyes. "Son, I do not mean to hinder you from learning," he said. "But your mother and I agreed that you are still very young to travel outside the country."

Even though I completely understood what my father meant with what he said -- that they were just worried about me going away for summer -- I still could not believe that my parents were not excited, but were rather edgy, about the idea of going to a foreign school to study English. After all, My parents were the ones who first encouraged me to study the language.

As a seven-year-old kid, my mother used to take me to school herself, and then, back home. And every day, as she walked with me, she would teach me new English words. "This one right here is called... what?" she always asked while pointing at some particular fruit or toy on display every time we came across my favorite store on the way to school. It was an exciting experience for me because whenever I answered my mother's questions correctly she would ask my father to reward me later by buying the things she pointed at for me.

This was how I learned my first English words -- my parents made sure that it was fun for me! They bought me books with pictures which they read to me before going to sleep. Also, they played lots of games with me where I needed to remember different English words to be able get their reward. With my parents' help, I was able to remember what an "apple" is, or how a "cat" looks like, or how to pronounce "doughnuts," and a lot of different English words.

But things were quite different in my grade school. In my English class, the teacher did not only expect me and my classmates to remember English words, she also taught us how to spell and read them. She wrote words in the blackboard while we tried to copy it in our little notebooks, trying and failing to make sense out of them. The different strange characters written on the blackboard greatly puzzled me. None of them looked familiar to me and it was quite clear that they were also strange to my classmates because almost all of us made funny comments about them. One of the boys in the class even said that the character "S" looked more like a snake than a letter. It was funny for us back then; it got our attention when the teacher told us that the word "snake" was really spelled starting with that particular letter!

Eventually, things even became tougher for me in my English class. There were lots of times when I failed to correctly read and pronounce a certain word that my English teacher pointed to on the blackboard. My English notebook was filled with misspelled words. And once in a while my mother found letters that does not really look anything like an English character -- it was really difficult for me in those days.

But one windy school day, something happened in class that greatly increased my enthusiasm in learning English. I was encouraged when, for the first time, I was able to write the whole English alphabet in my notebook on my own! The teacher rewarded me by marking a star on the back of my left hand. It was a really happy experience for me. And the even happier part of it was when I got home and showed my parents the star mark -- they bought me a new toy car as a reward! I was really very happy back then that I even drew and colored my toy car with a very big "CAR" and "THANK YOU MOM AND DAD" written under it. My parents became even happier when I showed it to them.

And so, my childhood and grade school days went on and ended like a dream full of twists. Back then my parents were the ones who always pushed me to go and study more and more just to be fluent in writing, reading, and speaking in English. It became such a shock to me when I was at high school, that they opposed the idea of going to UK for summer schools. "You always said that I should give my best in studying," I continued to argue with my father about attending summer schools in UK. "Please allow me to do that now. Allow me to go to UK. I promise to be good while I am in there. I want to learn more, father." With this, the conversation turned into an even more intense argument. "You are too young!" my father said aloud, almost shouting. "What if something happens to you?" "It is totally safe there, father," I said. "Just please trust me." I was so determined to make my father allow me to go to UK. But my determination still did not convince him although I spent all the day trying my best. The night came, and with it I became more and more hopeless. I hardly was able to sleep, thinking of the arguments I've just had with my father. I was so sad.

Morning came and I felt groggy upon not being able to get enough sleep. Little did I know that something great will happen to me that day -- in fact, the greatest news that I have ever heard came to me that day! My mother's voice came with a knock on the door to my room. "Come to breakfast now," she said. "Your father has something to tell you." So I hurriedly climbed down the stairs and went to the dining table. There sat my father almost as stiff as wood. "Your mother convinced me," he said upon seeing me, "that I should allow you to go to UK. Apply for admission for summer school there right away."

My heart jumped. That day opened a great deal of opportunities for me. I attended the King Oxford's School in UK for summer schools and learned quite a lot from the experiences I got there -- not only about the English language but also on education in general. I learned that, like my experiences with my mother and my English class in elementary school, learning a language is impossible without real practice outside the four corners of the classroom, in the real world. Education inside the school could only go too far, I realized.