Tim Phomsaly

Literacy
What is literacy? When I came to the US I might have been consider non-literate
by many standards from my peers being a high school student with no abilities in
English. Many of my teachers wonder why I was in school and would always treat me
differently because I didnt understand English notes were taken for me and given to me
after class. I only excelled in Math and that was due to the fact numbers are just
universal I guess. So was I literate at the time?
Lets back track a little and start the story from where I came from. I was born in
Thailand in a refugee camp due to the fact my parents were refugee from Laos during the
Vietnam Conflict. My father was a captain in the Laos army that aided the US to fight
against Vietnam. When the US had to retreat and leave my parents were evacuated in
fear that my parents would be killed for aiding the US. They were brought to a refugee
camp in Thailand and that was where I was born. I lived in Thailand for quiet some time
before moving to the US. I believe I lived in Thailand till I was 15. I went through
elementary and some bits of High school there before moving to the US. I learned to
language at the time Thai and Laos since in school I would use Thai while at home I used
Laos.
Starting High school in the US was very much different than in Thailand. First of
all, all the classes were in English and I couldnt understand anything at all except for
Math and some sciences. My parents employed a tutor for me to learn English at home
and at school the school provided me with an assistant type person who took notes and
help me through my classes.

My tutor at home he also came from Thailand but had lived in the US for many
years and had a college degree in English. He was a friend of the family he initiate
offered my parents that he would teach me for free but my parents insisted that he got
paid at least for his time with me. His name was Pasasouk but he went by the name Paul.
He had taught me the basics of English and pushed me to learn it telling me that English
was the language of global business and its importance in the world. Since the US was
such a world power English was language of power. However, that didnt really leave
too much of an impact to me at the time I had other interest mainly not disappointing my
parents and my interest in a girl at school.
My assistant at school her name was Sarah. She was probably my first crush and
the main reason why I wanted to learn English. She didnt speak any Thai or Laos but
she did take notes for me and tried to explain some concepts to me but most of the time
she just made weird hand gestures trying to explain things. She actually tried learned
Thai to better explain things. She did a pretty good job at learning Thai she was pretty
smart. Since she gave such a large effort to learn my native language I tried as much as I
could to learn her native language.
I used both tools at home my tutor gave me books and helped me with my
sentence he would translate some of my notes so I could understand my classes at school
Sarah would help me with notes and small translate of words I didnt truly understand. I
also read a lot of books mainly childrens book by Dr. Seuss. Those books were easy to
read and looking at the pictures I kind of understood what those sentences were trying to
say. After the Dr. Seuss books I began reading more books but this time without all the
pictures which was much harder to do at the time. I had to go back to some of the words

and look them up before understanding the full sentence. This helped my vocabulary
since the dictionary would give me examples and similar words to use in place of the
words I was looking for. Using this method I was able to learn and speak English in a
short amount of time.
Over time I just started to study by myself since I understood the basic of English.
What I needed to learn now was new words and how to pronounced words. Learning the
weird rules of English was difficult. Silent letters and transforming words such a phone
is pronounce with an F instead of PH and knife with an N instead of KN. Also words
such as there, their, and theyre all sound the same but all mean different things. These
are the words that gave me the most trouble at the time.
The SAT was probably a helper too I guess. It required me to learn a lot of old
English words that I dont often use but it helped build my vocabulary. Having to know a
lot of word and using context clues to find out the meaning of words I didnt understand.
Pronunciation was probably one of the hardest thing to master. Even though my
sentences were correct when I spoke them I just sounded weird. I had to practice this a
lot with Sarah and my tutor. How I mastered this was through television shows. I
watched however much my parents allowed me. I would try and say the words the same
way that the person on the show would say. My mom loved to watch soap operas so I
learn how to pronounce from those shows.
Present day a lot of people would compliment me on my English. They tell me
they thought I was born in the US since I have no accent at all when I speak or that my
knowledge of English vocab is very high and unexpected from someone who only
learned English in high school.