Memories of Memorization

Growing up in a more traditional Asian household, but in America brought its good share of conflictions as a child. My parents obviously would like to preserve as much of the Chinese culture and traditions as they can down the future generations. Among those, a key component is language, so I grew up speaking English at school and Chinese at home. Now, most studies about bilingual children agree that while the children struggle at first to differentiate the linguistic rules of each language, they make up for it later in life and therefore gain the advantage of learning a new language at a younger age when it is easier to learn. My mom was always worried about me falling behind in school due to my weaker grasp of English, so those “baggie books,” if anyone still remembers those, would end up being more that just me reading them. I would have to memorize it and then write it down. Over and over. The idea was repetition, repetition, repetition, in hopes of expediting my absorption of English. I still remember reading the Horrible Harry series and complaining to my teacher about what my mom did to me. So, once I was given a different book in the series to take home, just so that I would have something fresh to read. I should also note that when the books got longer, I no longer needed to memorize the text. Side note, it also didn’t help that my mom was a substitute English teacher in China before immigrating to America, so it took me longer to get past her level of English where I could finally get to do my English homework the way it was assigned. Though, I’m honestly grateful for all the rigor my mom enforced as it ultimately helped in the end and has helped bring me to where I am today.