Name: Ngoc Le Student ID: 800-815782

Professor: Debarati Dutta Course: ENGL 1101

FINAL PRODUCT LITERACY ETHNOGRAPHY

This is my Literacy Ethnography. In this writing, I will show how complex my literacy life is by comparing between my two biggest literacy environments Vietnam and America. My ethnography is divided into two sections. One is English Literacy where I describe my English learning pathway. Another is My Root Vietnamese Literacy, where I have some profound thinking about how powerful Vietnamese culture has influence my identity. My Literacy Ethnography is a project developed from my quiz writing about Learning from an Immigrating Asian Family by Guofang Li

ENGLISH LITERACY
Despite the fact that I have been learning English for 13 years, there are still a bunch of difficulties for me to communicate and get along with other people in America. I will write and compare the differences between my English home literacy environments - when I was in my homeland - Vietnam and when I am in the U.S. Fortunately, even in Vietnam or America, I always have such great literacy opportunities. Since I was 6 or 7, my Mom started to teach me English at home. At this time, the fastest way for me to learn a foreign language is through the songs. Therefore, my Mom bought me some cassettes together with the text books to help me enjoy learning. The song that goes with me until these days is The ABC song. Up until now, whenever someone asks me whether letter j is before or after letter h, I sing that song to remind myself and figure out the answer. When I was about 10, my parents decided to send me to an English center in town twice a week to practice English with some foreign teachers. At the weekend, they also took me to Xuan Thu Bookstore in downtown. This bookstore was full of English books in almost every topic. I could spend a whole day wandering around this place to find and read books. Then, in middle school and high school, instead of going to the bookstore at weekend, my friends and I sometimes joined some English clubs where many English learners were gathered to practice speaking. Many years later when I immigrated to the U.S, I had more and more chances to improve my second language because America is an English speaking country. Nowadays, I use English, speak in English, read in English almost every day. English is my only vehicle that drives me around America. Furthermore, my friends in Vietnamese Student Association sometimes come to my house to practice dancing. We talk and discuss in both English and Vietnamese. It is the time when I pick up many American slangs and idioms from them, who was born and grew up in the States.

My first English text book is Lets go by Cambridge publisher. Next is my literacy instruction in English. My mom is my first English teacher. She taught me many English songs when I was little. She sang and danced with me whenever we learnt a new song. We usually took turn to read the sample conversations on my English textbook. My Mom always tried to make me learn English in the most relaxed and enjoyable way. Besides, Mom was the one helped me with the homework I had in class. She revised my work twice a week as I was in elementary school. Not only learning from my Mom, I also had instructions from my teachers and my friends. Because once I grew up, my English developed beyond what my Mom could help, she ended with providing me some supporting tools such as dictionaries and Internet. Afterward, when I came to the States, I received a myriad of direct guidance from my uncle, who has been living in America for 15 years. Last January, he spent almost every weekend to teach me how to drive. Every part of the cars that he taught, from the brake to the trunk, the windshield were so much strange for a Vietnamese girl like me. He asked me to learn all these new vocabularies by heart in order to pass the driving test and most importantly, to drive in safe. My uncle also helped me correct the essay when I applied to UNC Charlotte and explained what I didnt understand about the lessons at school. I have been learning a lot from him, not just some English skills or vocabulary but also the U.S lifestyle. Moreover, thanks to his little sons, I can exercise listening to the U.S accent and sharpen my oral skill. His little kids usually show me the mispronounced words and my mistake in placing the emphasis. They point out my problems in pronunciation and help me fix them. Assuredly, The United States is where my English takes a momentous step toward fluency with a multiple of help from other family members.

Celebrating Thanksgiving 2012 with my cousins Third, I will describe my attitude of cooperation in literacy. Since the day my Mom had my little sister and got busier with her work, I got accustomed to learning on my own since the 2nd Grade. For the reason that I had 12 different subjects in a week, I had to check the schedule and reorganize my backpack every day. At first, it was pretty hard for an 8-year-old girl like me to discipline myself to finish homework, and prepare books, pencils, boards or other stationery for the next class day. But soon after, I no longer got indolent to make preparation because when I did a good job, my teacher always paid me a compliment in front of the class. These little words encouraged and made me very enjoy self-learning. As I moved to the sixth grade, English became a compulsory subject at school. For each semester, I had about 20 tests in English. All of them were written tests which focused only on grammar and reading comprehensive. My English since then were improved academically in written form. Because English was not my daily language in Vietnam, I did not have much time to manifest my speaking skill if I was not in an English club. At present, contrastingly, I communicate in English almost every day. The English I expose to right now is more conversational than what I had learnt before. However, the grammar rules, sentences structure, and wide range of vocabularies that I was taught in Vietnam become a solid foundation for my colloquial English. Furthermore, to gain confidence in English speaking, I invest time to talk with my little cousins and watch videos on YouTube with closed captions. I always have my little notebook with me to jot down new words with special spelling and emphasis.

One of the activities in my English club about the topic Casual Clothes Last but not least, there is socioemotional quality. My English learning pathway is divided into three eclectic periods. From 6 to 14 years old, learning English is my passion. I could spend a whole day reading books while listening to M2M or Backstreet Boyss CDs. From 15 to 18, learning English is my duty. I have to study very hard in order to get good grades. And when I came here, English is my future and at the same time my biggest pressure. For the reason that I neither was born in America nor grew up here, my English accent is somehow heavy and hard to understand. It comes with a spate of difficulties for me to make myself understood when speaking English to others. I always have the feeling that not many English-speaking people are interested in talking with me because of my influent English. When I work in group, owing to the language barrier, I cannot fully express my ideas and persuade people. This problem forces me to practice English more and more because nothing is worse than cannot express myself. Moreover, even though having limited English skills, my Mom and Dad still expect me to get a high GPA in college and find a stable job after graduation. My parents transferred all of their dreams to me when deciding to immigrate to America at the age of 50s. Therefore, I had to try my best to success and make them proud of me. Similarly, family responsibility is one of my concerns. Because I am the oldest child and my English is absolutely better than my parents, I take responsibility for all of the English-related issues at home. I act like parents to take care of my little sisters homework, pay bills, make appointments and do all the paperwork. All of these intellectual aspirations, incumbencies, and language difficulty burden on and exhaust me sometimes.

After reading Guofang Lis research about Yang and thinking about my home literacy environment, I found a lot of connections between me and Yang. Born in the Asian country and immigrate to the English-speaking community are what I share with him. The familiarity in family background gives me a precious key to enter Yangs world and have a thorough thought. Although there are a lot of challenges ahead for immigrating people like us, I believe that if Theres a will, theres a way.

MY ROOT VIETNAMESE LITERACY

Vietnamese culture is a foundation for my literacy life. Because I was born and raised in Vietnam for almost 19 years, Vietnamese culture has a significant impact in the way I think. Some Vietnamese standpoints I was taught since elementary school are still applicable to my life at the present. One of them is the lesson about the role of a family. Vietnamese people always have close-knit relationships with their family. We usually show a great respect to the elderly in family such as grandparents, parents, uncle, aunt, etc. An advice from any elderly family members is always treated as a high opinion. As for myself, before making any important decision, I always ask for opinions from other family members. Therefore, I take a great advantage of Literacy Instructions from home domain. Moreover, since the day I was born, I received a bunch of teachings from family. My Grandma taught me the first letter. My Mom used to teach me English. My Uncle showed me how to drive a car. Not only getting guidelines from family, I also have a responsibility to give guidelines to my little sisters school work. My duties are doing revisions on her homework every day and giving her a hand in Projects at school. When I help her with the homework, I also learn a lot of new vocabularies. That kind of learning broadens my reading and writing skills in English as well. Furthermore, Vietnamese writing style also have a big impact to my literacy in English. Just like Chinese, Vietnamese writing does not express the ideas directly. We use the eight-legged essay construction in most of the Vietnamese composition. The logic of Chinese composition, exemplified by the eight-legged essay, is like peeling of an onion: layer after layer is removed until the reader finally arrives at the central point, the core (The Classroom and the Wider Culture by Fan Shen). I was accustomed with this writing style for most of my student life, so when I moved to the U.S, my writing was usually considered as wordy and not straightforward. It took me some essays to realize that my instructors prefer a concise and direct composition than a long one with many pictorial phrases. I must change my style and do a lot of revisions in order to make my writings fit on American eyes. I also learn to write the short but in-full-meaning sentence instead of complicated ones.

This is a piece of my writing in Vietnamese. You can see that we usually use longs and complicated sentences to express the ideas.

Last but not least, my literacy learning in America does not stop at learning English. I also learn and try a ton of new things I havent done before in Vietnam. One of them must be baking. Because in Vietnam, it is very expensive to have an oven at home, we never bake a homemade cake. In contrast, baking is as easy as 123 in America. I started to love baking when moving to the States. I usually search for the recipe on website or asking my friends, buy all ingredients and get ready to enjoy my cake. Actually, the way we learn how to cook or bake in America is totally different from what happened in Vietnam. Everything in the States seems to have a specific recipe with exactly amount of ingredients. For example, the pictures below is my friends recipe for Cheesecake, if I use 400 degree to bake in 45-55 mins instead of 350 degree as in recipe, I will burn my cake.

Cheesecake Recipe For that reason, I usually follow the instructions or recipe when baking. All I do to make the recipe is more suitable for my taste is adjusting the amount of flavoring ingredients such as sugar, salt, etc.

I love to bake birthday cakes for my Family and prepare some dessert. Contrastingly, in Vietnam, we do not have any specific cooking recipe. I learnt how to cook by watching my Grandma cooking. Or if I do not have chance to watch her cook, I can call and ask her how

to do. She will not say exactly how many pound of meat or bean I need. But she just tells me what to do step by step. For instance, if I want to know how to fry an egg, she will tell me to cut onion into small pieces; crack an egg into a bowl; put some salt, sugar and Vietnamese fish sauce in and beat them; boil oil in a pan; put onions in first then pour the mixture of egg in. Depend on familys taste, in Vietnam different families have different cooking process for even one dish. By adding some more ingredients and steps, a familiar dish may have a totally different flavor. Generally, in Vietnam, cooking style is absolutely based on family. So the best way to learn how to cook is asking. There are no books or detailed printed recipes. Only language delivers our secrets in home cooking food.

CONCLUSION
In a nutshell, as you can see, there are plenty of differences in culture, viewpoints, and opportunities between Vietnam and America. Therefore, it takes time for immigrating people to get used to with a lifestyle in a foreign country. Every immigrant has their own stories. My Ethnography only shares my own experiences about literacy in my home domain. My learning pathway will not end after this course, even inside or outside house boundaries. As it is going on, I am growing up.