Warm-Up

1. Warm-Up • Today is the first day of the second quarter. Reflect on your performance in the first quarter. • What have you accomplished in the first quarter that you are proud of? • What do you still need to work on in the second quarter?

2. Warm-Up • What did you learn about grammar in the previous two days?

3. Agenda • Obj.: Analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone. • Obj.: Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature. • Read: “My English” by Julia Alvarez • Analyze: Author’s Voice • End of Class: 1st Quarter Reports

4. Nonfiction essay: “My English” • As a young child, Julia Alvarez lived in the Dominican Republic. She began to study English at school. Then, her family moved to New York. There a teacher sparked Alvarez’s love for the English language.

5. First Paragraph • Mami and Papi used to speak it when they had a secret they wanted to keep from us children. We lived then in the Dominican Republic, and the family as a whole spoke only Spanish alone, until my sisters and I started attending the Carol Morgan School, and we became a bilingual family. Spanish had its many tongues as well. There was the castellano of Padre Joaquín from Spain, whose lisp we all loved to imitate. Then the educated español my parents’ families spoke, aunts and uncles who were always correcting us children, for we spent most of the day with the maids and so had picked up their “bad Spanish.” Those women yakked as they cooked, they storytold, they gossiped, they sang—boleros, merengues, canciones, salves. Theirs were the voices that belonged to the rain and the wind and the teeny, teeny stars even a small child could blot out with their thumb. This campuno was my true mother tongue.

6. Spanish vocabulary • Castellano: Spanish for “Castilian,” the most widely spoken dialect of the Spanish language. • Padre: “Father” (Spanish), a form of address for a Roman Catholic priest. • Español: Spanish • Boleros, meringues, canciones, salves: Spanish and Latin American songs and dances. • Campuno: Spanish dialect spoken in rural areas of the Dominican Republic.

7. Second Paragraph • Besides all these versions of Spanish, every once in a while another strange tongue emerged from my papi’s mouth or my mami’s lips. What I first recognized was not a language, but a tone of voice, serious, urgent, something important and top secret being said, some uncle in trouble, someone divorcing, someone dead. Say it in English so the children won’t understand. I would listen, straining to understand, thinking that this was not a different language but just another and harder version of Spanish. Say it in English so the children won’t understand. From the beginning, English was the sound of worry and secrets, the sound of being left out.

8. As You Read … • Read with a partner. Take turns signing each paragraph to each other. • As you read, look for Alvarez’s memories, both positive and negative, of her three languages. • Work together to complete the chart.

9. Author’s Voice • Voice is the way a writer sounds on the page. Each author has a unique, distinctive voice. This is also called a writing style. • Word choice • Nouns? Verbs? Adjectives? Basic words or unusual words? • Attitude • Positive or negative? Serious or humorous? • Sentence structure • Long or short? Simple or complex?

10. Author’s Voice • Reread “My English” by Julia Alvarez. • Complete the Author’s Voice chart.

11. 1st Quarter Reports • Classwork 10% • Homework 10% • Assessment 80% • Quizzes, tests, and projects are very important. There will be more in the 2nd quarter. • Your 2nd quarter grade will be combined with your 1st quarter grade and the midterm.