RUNNING HEAD: Language Acquisition Autobiography 1

Language Acquisition Autobiography

Grace Roldan

Los Angeles Pacific University

“’I am youth. I am joy. I am freedom!’ said Peter Pan.” This quote from Peter Pan by

J.M. Barrie is the epitome of my earliest childhood memory. The day was July 28 and it was

my fourth birthday. I don’t remember being three, but I remember the day I turned four and

how mad I was that I had to be four instead of three. I wanted to stay little forever. I didn’t

want to be a grown-up, so I didn’t want to grow up. I threw a fit! I recall climbing on furniture

to get into my mom’s closet, pulling down everything in my way so that I could reach my

onesies that had been put away because I’d outgrown them. My mom had special storage bags

piled high in her closet and when I found the one with my bag, I put on as many onesies as I

could, ran to her sewing machine and climbed under the table it was on and cried and cried.

She couldn’t make me be four if I fought enough. I remember not understanding why I

couldn’t just stay three. Why was she everyone making me be four? I didn’t grasp the concept

that I was growing up whether I wanted to or not. My mom is a lifelong learner and put her

schooling on hold to raise myself and my siblings. By 20 years old, she was a stepmom to

three and was pregnant with her own, my sister Gizelle. When my youngest sibling was old

enough, my mom went back to college, Citrus College, then Azusa Pacific University, and

eventually La Verne University. She has her Master’s now and wants to go back for her

Doctorate one day. My mom is a teacher. More so than just schooling, she has taught her

children many valuable lessons, the biggest being that education should be strived for and

pursued just like Mary Ellen’s grandfather says in The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco. One of

her favorite authors is Patricia Polacco, so we grew up listening to her read Polacco’s books,

and when we were old enough, reading them ourselves.

At age 4, my mom started teaching me to write my name. I don’t know why, but we had a

school desk in our living room. That is where I learned how to write my name. I remember
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tracing letters and practicing repeatedly. I don’t recall my emotions at that time. I loved

looking at books and watching PBS because of Reading Rainbow. In Kindergarten, my

teacher Mrs. Pitchfork taught us how to count using marbles in a big container. Kindergarten I

remember much of. I recall playing in the plastic kitchen with my friends Brandon and

Priscilla. In first grade, I was already reading and reading well. I remember someone coming

in to class to test us. I was obsessed with books by that point. I was hungry for knowledge and

soaked up every book I could. Second grade, we got to end each day on the carpet reading as a

class. I frequently visited the school library and made friends with the librarian so that I could

check out more books. I often checked out a book about cats. It was filled with facts about

different kinds of cats like growth rate, colors, and origins. My siblings and I played outdoors

a lot of as young children. We had a fairly large backyard, a treehouse, and great imaginations.

I spent a lot of time outdoors playing with my barbies and imagining the worlds they lived in

as if I were directing a movie. In third grade, I learned bad words at school, and instead of

saying the words, my siblings and I would spell them out and argue that we didn’t call each

other bad words, we spelled them.

As you can tell, my mom has been a very influential person in my life and fostered in me

a pursuit of lifelong learning just as she has. I grew up surrounded by books and going on

backyard adventures with my siblings. I love reading! I kid you not. I would read my own

books in class. If we were assigned a book to read, I would read ahead or finish the book

before we were supposed to finish. I was apart of a group in elementary that would be taken

out of class to help younger students learn how to read. It was a challenging but rewarding

experience which played a large role in my career aspirations. My eventual goal is to become

a Literacy Specialist. Understanding language acquisition is vital to teaching young audiences’

literacy. You cannot expect someone to invest their time in learning if you do not know what

you are teaching them. Our early life experiences greatly affect what we gravitate to as adults.

While I took a liking to reading at a very young age, two of my sisters had a hard time with

reading. They are both dyslexic and struggled in school; both sisters worked tremendously

hard to overcome their disabilities and earn their degrees. These same two sisters are both

APU alumni, graduating with honors. With that being said, not everyone has had their same

experiences. Educators must be attentive to the needs of all students in their class and utilize

the tools that help each student learn best. According to the International Dyslexia

Association, “Accommodations, provided for both testing and instruction, change the way

students access information and demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities; they do not

change academic standards or expectations.” We are inquisitive creatures and this ability to

comprehend information from our environments begins at birth. Children are wired to do just

that, and their brains are equipped to hear words and see things and connect the dots. In The

Linguistic Genius of Babies, Patricia Kuhl states, “During the production of speech, when

babies listen, what they’re doing is taking statistics on the language that they hear. And those

distributions grow and what we’ve learned is that babies are sensitive to the statistics, and the

statistics of Japanese and English are very, very different.” Children are often products of their

environment and if we are intentional with their learning and language acquisition, we are in

turn setting them up for success. Watching Kuhl’s TEDtalk, I was reminded of my nephew

who started speaking at what I thought was a young age. At eight months, he was mimicking

our words and it was fascinating to see. There is so much that can be taught to a child if we are

doing our part to expose them to language(s) during such developmental times. Ultimately,

this knowledge can be used in and out of the classroom if we bridge those gaps.
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Resources

Accommodations for Students with Dyslexia. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2020,

from https://dyslexiaida.org/accommodations-for-students-with-dyslexia/

Kuhl, P. (2010, October). The Linguistic Genius of Babies. TED. Retrieved

from https://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies