Language and literacy played a big role in my life. Literacy helps us grow as a person–it is how we as beings progress. Language and Literacy are a reflection of our beliefs and how we see the world. Languages also play an important role in interpersonal relationships. Language is the way we communicate and meet other people. How we can communicate to our family members from our parent’s birthplace . How we learn, teach others, gain information, and also play a big role in culture. Furthermore, language and literacy was able to transcend from thousands of years of information. History, a variation of both language and literature, helped show what happened in the past. History showed us how past events and human interactions impact day to day life. Thus, passing down knowledge and information throughout generation after generation. Such as the discovery of gravity, mathematical formulas, the discovery of planets, and more. This information helped construct the intellectual foundation that makes future generations better prepared than the last. Language and literacy gave us our beliefs, such as major religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. The Bible, the Quran, the Old Testament/Tanakh also spread the belief of these major religions which has now over millions of people who follow this belief, these holy books contain pieces of information from thousands of years and which is constantly being read giving us are beliefs and rules which people follow for the rest of our lives. I will talk about my experiences with Language and Literacy and how they affected my life.

In my experiences with language and literacy, all my life I had to speak two languages, understand and read them. One language I’m good at is English but my Creole which is my mom’s home country language and I was terrible at it. One moment was when I was about 8 or 9 years old. My mom usually took me and my family to a Protestants Haitian church. We had a routine, all children and teenagers separated from the adults and would go to Sunday school together. So as we separated, we went downstairs and followed the instructor. I was so scared because I’m usually not a social person during those times unless you were my friend. So at least 5 kids sat around a table and she gave each of us a bible. An English bible and she read a chapter to us. Then she made us translate the Bible verses from English to Creole. All my life I was never good at Creole because my family made me focus on English more because of school. So when it was my turn I was scared because I knew my Creole wasn’t good at all. So as she told me to translate I started stuttering. I couldn’t even get one word out of my mouth. When I finally got it out I pronounced it horrible. So the instructor decided to help me sound it and even then I failed at saying it. I felt so ashamed that I couldn’t even speak my people’s language, not even a hint. I only understood the language. Then the instructor asked me “Do you know how to speak Creole” as she tried to hold back her laughter. She had a big smirk on her face and she was  brown skin with medium black hair. With a sad and disappointing face and with a lone tone I replied “No I can’t” . I felt so embarrassed and wanted to leave. Looking back, this experience made me realize that I should try to learn and understand Creole. As to understanding my cultural background, I was able to understand what the pastor was because he preached in Creole. Learning Creole was so helpful because now I was now able to communicate with family members who didn’t really have good English such as my grandparents. Also open my social life to meeting other Haitians and speaking to them. I also became a translator for a foreing exchange student from Haiti who couldn’t speak English. Now when I have Sunday school, I’m able to translate everything perfectly with perfect pronunciation.