Assignment #1: Myself As a Writer

Myself As a Writer

My earliest memory that I experienced as a reader happened in Korea when I was about 5 years old. As I walked through the busy streets, I was fascinated by writings on advertisements and signs attached to buildings, and I felt compelled to read them all aloud. At first, my mother was delighted with my peculiar habit, encouraging me to reading them all, however, as time went by, she was somewhat annoyed by my obsessive behavior. Since I could not pay attention to the direction where we were heading that day, for I was busy engaged in reading all the signs, my mother had to tug me along by pulling my hand constantly to the directions where that day’s destination might have been. The memory of my mother’s strong tugging hand had permanently imprinted in my memory.

I do not recall any significant difficulties in learning to read or write in Korean. The transitions for acquiring my first language, Korean, were smooth and effortless compared to my second language, English, for the first language skills came as natural. I believe in Chomsky’s Universal Grammar theory hypothesizing that human beings are born with preexisted language ability, called the innate capacity. I also agree with Lenneberg’s critical period hypothesis that older learners of a second language rarely achieve the native like fluency that younger learners display, despite often progressing faster than children in the initial stages.

Teachers in Korean were more intensely focused on conveying subject knowledge in math and science than Korean language, and I do not remember teachers administering us spelling tests beyond 5th grade unlike here in America. It makes so much sense that Korean language is constituted as a uni-language as opposed to English language that was originated from and influenced by many different countries such as, Latin, Roman, Greece, France and many more. Not only American children have to learn about parts of speech, but they also have to acquire root words using prefixes and suffixes and what countries those were originated from. In this sense, learning English is definitely more complicated than that of Korean.

The most significant memory I had in Korea regarding reading was that the teachers would assign 5 to 10 classical books for us to read during the summer vacation from middle school to high school, and these were some books that I had read and some attempted during vacations:

• San Gook Gi
• Whang Jin Hee
• Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• Tess by Thomas Hardy
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• Gone with the Wind
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

These are among many books that I had read midst of hot and humid summer days and nights where the crickets chirp endlessly, evoking me into life’s sadness and hardship as mosquitoes wheezed by biting me all over the body mercilessly. At that time, I was definitely a hormone charged teenager who was consumed by discontent and restless, and my diary revealed poignantly how I felt about life in general. By retrospect, those were the best times of my life being able to submerge into the characters of books by keeping falling in love with Rhett Butler in Gone with The Wind and Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre. Not only we had to read the books, we also had to write summaries about them, and the teachers were vigilant in the processes by having us read them aloud in class.

For the writing experiences, the Seoul District had a writing contest in every spring and every student grades from 4th grade through High school had to participate in it. The teachers gave us one period (one hour), and we had to write narrative or expository essays or Sijo by carefully selecting from the given themes and different genres, and each student could only choose one theme under one genre. When we turned in our finished writings, each teacher would review them and selected the best ones and then submitted them to the district pool. It was a great privilege to be selected into the top 10, for not only it was an honor, but some of us were ecstatic because the prizes were comprised with many expensive classical novels, encyclopedias, and Korean and English dictionaries.

In one year during my junior in high school, instead of writing a usual essay, I chose to write a Sijo which was a profoundly short and very structured poetry form initially introduced by Chinese, for I was mesmerized by its beauty that resonated serenity and peace. For a while, I was so absorbed by it, and just witnessing a simple morning light, a drop of rain, and a fresh smell of breeze stirred my whole emotional state, which compelled to write one immediately. By following the tradition, we would sit in a circle and compose one impromptu according to a given topic by taking turns. It was a profound experience.

Sijo is traditionally composed in three lines of 14-16 syllables each, totaling between 44-46 syllables. A pause breaks each line approximately in the middle; it resembles a caesura but is not based on metrics, and here is an example:
The spring breeze melted snow on the hills then quickly disappeared.
I wish I could borrow it briefly to blow over my hair
And melt away the aging frost forming now about my ears. ...U T'ak (1262-1342, author of this oldest surviving Sijo) (http://www.ahapoetry.com/sijo.htm).

In college, I was on the way of becoming a registered nurse when I had to meet a required social sciences’ prerequisite of American history. When I heard Dr. Yoshino’s lecture, I knew immediately that I had to major in history, for I was falling in love with the American Founding Fathers and their ideologies that shaped the American history, thus, the hallmark of my writing had begun. Having come to this country at 21 years old, my writing had been contoured into a certain style, meaning that I had not learned how to write academic papers in using a critical thinking ability. It was very difficult for me to transform my preconceived knowledge into the new academia, such concepts as, America actually practiced “aristocracy” instead of “democracy” because only 1% of elite controls this country, and Marxism has many merits. These prevalent ideologies at UCR were shocking academic discoveries for me, and it was hard to grasp the concepts. Even though I was able to digest theses theories eventually, I just could not translate them into my writings, not to mention for grammatical and linguistic aspects of writing in English too. However, many professors and teaching assistants took pity on me and worked with me diligently and consistently on essays, term papers and research papers. I am permanently grateful for them.

After all these years, I cannot fathom how I am still struggling with the writing, mainly for the correct usages of articles and propositions. I do not know how to overcome with these problems, and at times I get so discouraged. I have taken a class specially designed for the articles, and according to its rules, it has 101 for them. The negative aspect is that after taking the class, I am more confused than before by overcompensating it, and the same story applies to the usage of propositions as well. Maybe I am in the fossilization period, and when my Korean friends inform me that I will always have problems with articles and prepositions just like they do, I feel hopeless.

I am also finding out that these problems also apply to English language learners in elementary levels. I am a substitute teacher for elementary, and my district is composed with a high percentage of ELLs. When I implement language arts, I am often surprised to see how much ELLs are having similar problems as I am. Many of them are struggling with propositions, but not as much as articles. When I reveal my problems on the usages of articles and prepositions to some ELL coaches and teachers, they just dismiss it as a minor problem and often suggest that I could overcome it with a simple exercise such as reading books aloud or circling all propositions when I read. I wish the problems are simple as that, however, I know it has to be more complicate than that, and I am determine to find out how to help ELLs and also myself.

I have just taken EESL 615 last quarter and enjoyed writing a literature review using 15 resources. I am anxiously looking forward to engaging in writing a research paper for bilingualism in Korean. Even though I have mostly written papers in MLA form, I am learning how to write them in APA style. I am not a digital generation and have a habit of printing out the articles instead of reading them directly, however, I am getting better at using electronic technologies and love to communicate through emails. Taking Prof. Marcy’s CALL has helped me tremendously.

References
Accessed April 10, 2010 from http://www.ahapoetry.com/sijo.htm