Literacy Narrative
Please answer the following questions and any others that occur to you along the way. You could answer in a narrative or a bullet list, as you please. Your goal is to share your memoires about coming to be literate as you understand what that is. We want to share these many different experiences of the same phenomena as a way of thinking about how we hold it differently and in common.
Writing
1.What is your earliest memory of writing?
I remember when I was about a 2nd grader in primary school, I wrote a “love letter” to a handsome boy in my class. In the letter, it was only a few messy and crooked words including his name and the Chinese version (我爱你) of ‘I love you’. The reason why I remembered this was because my father found this letter which I hid it in the closet. He teased me in front of my cousins, which hurt my young heart and self-esteem. So, this first memory of writing has stayed in my heart for over 25 years.
2.What is your earliest memory of being taught to write?
If my memory serves me right, it was in the primary school when a middle-aged Chinese teacher taught the whole class how to write different strokes in one Chinese character(永yǒng) . There are six strokes in this character, namely 一横 (horizontal stroke), 丨竖 (vertical stroke)丶点 (dot stroke), 丿撇 (left-falling stroke), 亅勾 (hook stroke) and ㇏捺(right-falling stroke). She wrote it on the blackboard and asked us to use the pencils to imitate her, practice basic strokes and maintain proper stroke direction and pressure control on the white paper.
3.Did your parents read to you?
Definitely yes, my mom usually read to me before bedtime and when I was bored since the age 3. She bought a lot of books to me and read many Grimm’s fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White. She also read Anderson’s fairy tales such as The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Ugly Duckling. These stories left a strong impression on me and stimulated my vivid imagination.
4.Did they have books lying around the house?
My mom had a lot of books lying on the shelves, on the table and some were in the chair near my bed in my home.
5.Did you have an influential school teacher and if so, what do you remember of them?
My Chinese teacher who taught me Chinese in the primary school was very influential to me! It is because she was very encouraging to me although I did not excel when I was a 5th grader. She usually left some good comments on my report cards like “Tingyu is a very self-motivated girl. I have witnessed that she has made huge progress”. Also, she is a very passionate teacher since she is always reading Chinese poems and poetry aloud to us in class. I could felt her huge enthusiasm for the love of traditional Chinese culture from her sparkling eyes.
6.What part did reading play in your development as a writer?
Reading worked as a prerequisite for me because I gained many thoughts from reading books such as Bibles, autobiographies, psychology and history books. These thoughts from sages or seers gave me inspiration and motivation as a writer.
7.Did you ever read a precis or watch a movie instead of reading the book?
Of course! When I was an English major who tried to finish a book review at the end of the semester, I gained some ideas by watching a political comedy-drama movie called Animal Farm which was adapted from George Orwell’s classical novel. I explored themes of power and inequality in the Soviet Union in the book review without reading the whole book.
8.Did you have an influential professor and if so, what do you remember of them?
Yes! My university supervisor who was also my English-Chinese translation class professor was very influential to me. He was very rigid to me but I am really into his teaching style because he taught me to be hard-working and self-driven.
9.Describe your writing processes and behaviors.
I may spend a lot of time brainstorming by talking with my classmates or friends or reading a lot of materials on the Internet or in the library. I have a rough outline,and I start to write. I will revise and edit my essays by using Grammarly to correct some grammar or spelling mistakes.
10.How do you teach writing?
I may use my past teaching experience to help me prepare some slides when I teach ENGL 1101 or 1102. I usually follow these 4 steps namely warm-up, instruction, discussion, and in-class writing. When I have difficulty teaching some difficult concepts or figuring out some class activities, I ask my American colleague for suggestions and advice.
Reading
1.What is your earliest memory of reading?
It started when I was 3 or 4 years old reading some Chinese picture books with colorful illustrations. I could understand some basic and simple pictures but might have problems understanding characters.
2.What part does reading play in your writing?
It serves as the first step for me to write as reading gives me a lot of different perspectives and insights to help me find my own standpoint.
3.Have you ever read a summary or watched a movie instead of reading an assigned book?
Yes. I usually did that because it was time-saving, especially for the lack of time to finish the assignment.
4.Does listening to someone read a book provide you with the same experience as reading it yourself? Elaborate.
No. Because other people may have different rhythms to pause and use different sentence stress and word stress compared with reading by myself. It may cause different understanding to me.
Opining
1.Do you have an opinion about the present state of the economy?
The economy is better than I initially thought because Chinese news stations reported mostly on homelessness and stealing in cities such as San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. When I came here, my opinion changed because I saw so many restaurants still open post-pandemic which I contribute to several of these workers being hard workers.
2.Do you have an opinion about NATO?
I heard it from the history teacher in high school. The history teacher told us it was a not very conducive to Chinese development. Since the cold war after WWII，NATO was regarded as a threat to China in military. It is because the U.S. and Europe united together to have a stronger military force, which was seen as a threat to some socialist countries like China.
However, from ChatGPT’s answer, I learned of a good side to NATO and its effect on China. Because NATO has created more job opportunities and stability in the west, China increased the import and export trade with the western world.
3.Do you have an opinion about the relationship between sacrifice and faith?
I don’t think they are related. From my perspective/ In my opinion/ I believe/ From my viewpoint, / From my point of view, / From my standpoint, As far as I’m concerned, faith means what you believe in your life and what you think about how the word works. For example, I believe in God and that every human being has their own destiny and everyone has a mission to fulfill.
But sacrifice is a very personal choice and it means differently to different people. For example, breadwinners in the family may sacrifice their leisure to make money for their family members and the housewives need to sacrifice their independence to take care of their babies and household 24/7.
4.Do you ever use words you can’t define?
Yes. I sometimes know what some words mean. Nevertheless, it is hard for me to express them and put them into words, especially for some new terms such as AI or machine learning.
5.How comfortable are you with saying, “I don’t know.”?
I have become more comfortable with saying this than when I was young. When I was an undergraduate or in middle school, I had a lot of quizzes and exams. When I finished some open-ended questions in exams, I didn’t know the answer but I would try to make something up to finish it to gain some possible scores instead of admitting “I don’t know”.
However, I have become more mature and more confident. I don’t need to pretend I know everything because I have no exams anymore. I know admitting I don’t know doesn’t mean I am stupid and I may have the chance to learn from others.
Thinking
1.Do you have an internal monologue?
I have an internal monologue frequently on a daily basis. I often talk to myself in my mind when I try to make a decision. For instance, in class, if I want to ask a question to a professor, there might be another voice in my mind to tell me not to do that because the question might be dumb or stupid. Then I probably resist the desire to ask questions immediately.
2.Do you ever edit as your narrate to yourself?
From time to time. For example, I speak or think to myself, but I realize pronounce some words incorrectly or I associate one idea to a wrong item, then I go back and use a different word to revise my thoughts.
3.What is it like to think wordlessly?
Thinking wordlessly means people think in images, visuals or emotions. They have pictures in their mind about what happens and they do not have inner monologue.
4.Is there a difference between rationalizing and thinking?
Yes, rationalizing refers to use logic to analyze something. It means using intention to think or evaluate. So you direct your thinking when you rationalize. For example, when students are working on assignments after class, they are rationalizing. This is active thinking. However, rationalizing can be something negative. For instance, criminals try to find some excuse to make their bad intention seem innocent.
On the contrary, thinking is more passive than rationalizing. Thinking sometimes means using one’s subconsciousness or instinct to remember something. When a person has the first thought to recall some past events, it is off the top of the head. Or thinking just refers to daydreaming or having random thoughts when someone is absent-minded.
AIing
1.Have you used AI?
Yes. I have used AI for one year to help me prepare for teaching ENGL1101 and 1102 or my learning some rhetoric and composition classes. I use AI such as ChatGPT as my paper reviewer and tutor to give me prompt feedback and suggestions. But I take some of its advice.
2.How many times?
I have used AI on a daily basis. It has become part of my academic and teaching life as it helps me solve many difficult questions.
3.Toward what ends?
To help me have more perspective and give me some thoughts on finding the answer quickly.
4.Current thoughts about it?
Although Elon Musk says recently that AI has learned all books and knowledge in the past 2000 years, it will be smarter than humans in the future. I am not sure if it is a sensational way or an exaggeration to say this.
Admittedly, AI can provide super-long answers in a time-efficient way. However, it has difficulty feeling emotions as humans do when it provides a “perfect” answer so it sounds very robotic. Besides, AI is not really thinking for itself. It may sound very confident to give a false answer even with no reliable sources to back it up. Some answers are also very repetitive even with good organization and structure.
To me, it seems more like an online encyclopedia or a search engine to give the answer in a few seconds. It is like an advanced answer collector.