Question+3+When+was+a+time+you+felt+illiterate?+Explain+how+and+why.


 * #3. ** When was a time you felt illiterate? Explain how and why.

Ever since I was a child, I wanted to study Spanish. This desire to learn a new language was influenced by some of my childhood friends who came from bilingual homes. I wanted to learn their language so that I could be bilingual as well and not feel so illiterate when they spoke among themselves. My first step in learning the language was to ask them to teach me two words//, hello and goodbye//.

These two words were not enough. I wanted to learn more words and more about the language. To help me accomplish my goal, I would look at product labels and try to figure out what it said. Not knowing how to read a Spanish product label made me feel even more illiterate. I felt illiterate because it was a mysterious language and as a youth I had no means to conquer this problem of illiteracy. Still, I wanted to learn how to read labels. Often times I would notice the letter “y” sitting in the middle of the sentence with no other letters connected to it. That lonely “y” would pique more interest in my learning Spanish because I wanted to know what that letter meant.

As I grew older, I realized that “y” had to have some kind of meaning just like our one letter “I” and “a.” When I took my first adult Spanish class, I discovered that the “y” meant “//and//.” I wanted to know more. I craved to know more and understand more of the language. I would conjugate verbs on papers and later dream about them (verbs) in Spanish. Still, conjugating and dreaming about the language was not enough. I wanted to hold conversations and experience the language. Therefore, I enrolled in a studies abroad program to Mexico. After being there for three weeks, that feeling of being illiterate began to dissipate. My reading and writing assignments aided me to speak better and be able to understand the responses. After returning to the States, I continued to read, write and speak Spanish. I felt empowered because I no longer was illiterate.