After reading the “Sponsors of literacy” by Deborah Bradt, where I understand the meaning of the sponsor could be the person who taught me reading or writing. When I recalled my past, thinking about the person who influenced me the most of literacy. And there is one woman appears from my memory. She is my middle school English teacher.
Since I was born in China, the first time I’ve ever contacted with English was when I was in the first grade. Six years in elementary school, I’ve learned quite a lot about English. Although I would always get an A in English, I never really liked it. All the efforts I put in was only to pass the exams. However, when I thought I’d keep doing the same thing in middle school, I met her. She’s unlike other teachers who treat their students strictly. I can’t forget the first time I met her, she started with a joke which made the whole class laugh, then introduced herself in English. She intentionally spoke slowly in order for us to understand, nevertheless I still didn’t get it. But I was jealous of her fluency in English. According to my previous excellent English grades, I was selected to be one of the four TAs. We are responsible to collect English homework every morning and to grade all the quizzes, and tests. Which give me more opportunities to talk to her.
Most teachers in China wouldn’t talk anything beyond school-works with students. Fortunately, she’s not one of them. Whenever she has time, she’d tell us the stories about how she was passionate in English in college, as soon as she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English, she traveled to a lot of countries. An old Chinese proverb says “Reading thousands of books is not as good as traveling thousands of miles”, she told us with the ability of understanding more than one language, we should always try to go outside the country to explore other cultures. It aroused my interests in studying English, instead of only to deal with exams. She’s read a lot of English books or magazines. Therefore, she would always tell me, whenever she found a great book or an inspirational article that wouldn’t be too difficult for me to read. As long as l finished the extra “homework” she gave to me, we would go over the content later again, focusing on the vocabularies and grammars. This honestly helped me to improve my English literacy skill. And since I’ve never officially learned grammars here in the United State, I’m still using the grammars where I learned six years ago. It helped me to survive from middle school to high school.
Even though I’ve left China for almost five years, I still talk to her sometimes, exchanging the thoughts or things I’m confused about in English. I’m so grateful I met her in my life, all my achievements today are inseparable from her. She’s my literacy sponsor who shaped me into a better person than I could have become.