As mentioned before, when I first entered first grade, I did not speak much English. I spoke mainly Chinese. My father is from Shanghai and my mother is from Taiwan and I spoke Chinese at home. I understood only simple English such as what kids talked, but I did not understand teacher talk English because they talked too fast and used a more complicated vocabulary that I did not understand so when I entered first grade, I did not understand everything the teacher said or was teaching. The first grade teacher thought I was mentally challenged because I did not raise my hand to answer her teacher questions like the other kids did. So when my mother was called in for a parent teacher conference, the teacher was concerned about my low grades and lack of participation. I remember being sent out of the classroom to take all kinds of cognitive deficit tests, speech tests and IQ tests. They were never able to find anything wrong with me because I scored really well on those tests. The teacher was perplexed why I was so quiet in class and did not understand what was going on.
When my mother came to the parent-teacher conference, instantly, I started talking rapidly in Chinese. I talked constantly, incessantly, non-stop because as a kid, I was nicknamed 'The tornado' because of my excess energy and non-stop talking. The first grade teacher was surprised that I could talk at all since I never talked in her class. As the teacher saw me chattering happily in Chinese, she finally realized that it was my language barrier that prevented me from talking in her English monolingual 1st grade classroom. The teacher then advised my mother that my mother should only speak to me in English when I am at home, and not to speak to me in Chinese at home anymore to accelerate my learning of English. After a few months of my mother speaking English in the home, I learned English and was chattering happily in English in my teacher's first grade classroom like all the other kids.
Once my mother started speaking English in the house, I lost my Chinese. Today, I can speak very simple Chinese up to age 6 Chinese. I cannot read or write in Chinese. I took Chinese classes in college, but it is not the same as having had Chinese in the house as a kid. When a Language Minority Student loses his/her L1 in order to learn L2 English, this is called bicultural ambivalence. I lost a lot of my Chinese culture in order to learn English and be American. I have always felt the conflict between my Chinese upbringing and my American side. Part of the phenomenon of bicultural ambivalence is never feeling culturally comfortable in any culture. In Taiwan and among other Chinese people from China, I am viewed as American or Americanized because I speak little Chinese and speak American English and have American mannerisms. Among Americans, I am viewed as 'exotic' or 'other' as a person from China. Even though I am Chinese American, I experience this bicultural ambivalence of people Chinese or American, not fully accepting me as one of them. Wherever I am, in China or America, I am always the 'other'.
Ovando states "Ancestral language loss also may occur because non-English-speaking parents, in an effort to help their children acquire English quickly, talk to them in their second language, English. Sometimes, unfortunately, this practice is catalyzed by teacher pressure. Moved by the desire to have non-English-speaking students acquire English as quickly as possible, well-meaning, but ill-advised teachers sometimes recommend that language minority parents use English with their children at home. Whent this happens, the nature of the relationship between parent and child become impoverished." (Ovando, 21)
Unfortunately, once my parents started speaking to me only in English, I not only lost my Chinese culture, but I also lost the ability to really communicate with my parents exactly how I felt. My parents' English was not good enough to understand all the nuances of whatever I felt and vice versa. I always had to use simple English with my parents and avoid slang so my parents could understand what I was saying and my parents could never really tell me how they felt because they only could express themselves fully in Chinese. This kept my relationship with my parents on a somewhat superficial level and I ended up having a fuller emotional relationship with my sibling, cousins, and childhood friends.
When I visited my grandparents, they spoke no English at all. They spoke only Chinese since they lived in Taiwan. While other children learn about their grandparents and about family history by listening to their grandparents tell stories about the family, I lost that opportunity because my knowledge of Chinese was just too poor. I understood only the simplest of family stories, but for the most part, I felt excluded when my parents and grandparents would speak rapidly in Chinese leaving me lost. In Taiwan, I was not able to understand anything on TV or in the Chinese movies. So even though I mastered English quickly due to my first grade teacher's advice of my mother to speak English in the house, I sacrificed knowledge of my Chinese culture to learn that English.
Research shows that 80 percent of the referrals to special education are generated from teachers’ concerns over reading problems (Snow, Burns, and Griffin.1998). Previous research indicated an over representation of English language learners in special education classes (Yates & Ortiz, 1998). However, current research suggests that educators appear to be doing a better job distinguishing a learning disability from language differences. (2007)
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