My Plurilingual Journey
Nicole Victoria Vasiliadis was the name I received when I was born in Newmarket, Ontario at South Lake Hospital. I was born on March 29, 1995 with a loving mother and father who met two years before I was born. My mom and dad are Greek and are the first generation born in Canada. When I was born my parents would speak to me in English which has allowed me to orally converse with family and friends in my first spoken language. My parents showed me videos from when I was a toddler that demonstrated me reading books to them. They would always tell me that I loved listening to stories and always tried to copy what they were saying.
Some of these literacy books are still sitting on my book shelf in my room because they are the stories I cherish the most as I have a strong connection with them. Through these conversations I would have with my parents as an infant, I developed the written language very quickly because of the constant engagement with the English alphabet. Although much of the vocabulary was not as complex as it is now, I learned overtime through education which enhanced by verbal and written English language. I believe that my elementary school teachers, especially in Kindergarten, played a big role in establishing my first language. It is a complex language because it was difficult as a young child to sound out words and spell them correctly with letters I could not identify when sounding out certain words. According to Flores (2016), language can be thought of as a system of conventions shared by members of a society to communicate and learn through the four modes. These modes consist of listening, speaking, reading and writing. When I was growing up the four modes are what allowed me to develop the English language through its multiple features of spelling, pronunciation and vocabulary.
I mention my parents but have yet to discuss my grandparents! My mother’s parents were born in a small town north of Athens, Greece called Antartiko near the city Florina and left the country to come to Canada in 1964. My dad’s parents were also born in a town close to Florina called Proti and came to Canada in 1952. When my grandparents came to Canada in those years they settled into their current residence to start their families and successfully accepted Canada as their new home. My yiayia’s and papou’s, which means grandmother and grandfather, use to watch me as an infant when my parents had to go to work. They spoke to me in Greek, Macedonian and English. They tell me stories about how I would copy some of the words they spoke with me in Greek and Macedonian. I would reiterate these words back to them while trying to understanding what they meant.
This idea comes from the reading that children imitate sounds that are reinforced into their language environment by Coelho (2016). This is one of the three major theories explained about how language is acquired. As an infant I was absorbing information from my environment, especially when my grandparents spoke to me in Greek. As I got older, they slowly stop talking to me and my brother in Greek because we could not understand what they were saying when they spoke. The reason for this was because we spent most of our time under the supervision of my parents who did not speak to us in Greek at all, as they resourced to English for everyday conversation. When I was about ten years old my parents placed me and my brother in a Greek school every Saturday. We learned a few common words but since we stopped I have not regained any vocabulary from the language. I have not yet mastered full sentences or can understand what my grandparents say but it has been a goal of mine to accomplish. Greek is a beautiful language!
When I was four I moved from Newmarket to the city of Woodbridge. The community culture was a majority of Italians. A lot of the restaurants, neighbours and friends at school were Italian and spoke the language. Currently to this day I still get mistaken for an Italian, apparently because of my appearance. I don’t mind it at this point because I have been around them since I was a toddler. People tell me they assume I am because I speak with my
hands and I continue to notice that I do this – which is pretty funny! When my aunt, my mother's sister, married my uncle she was brought into an Italian household. When we went to gatherings with his side of the family I can pick up on a couple common words or sometimes ask for clarification on what someone just said. As I was growing up in the city of Woodbridge, I attended a Catholic school and had French class often. This is another language that I am not fluent in but can recognize common words and spellings from my active participation in the language of French. This principle is one of the six that allow teachers to teach ELL in mainstream classrooms. It can also be applied to other languages because with “active participation in social interactions it will foster the development of conversation” (Cummins, 2015). Many of these languages have formed my identity from English as my first language, Greek as my family culture and French and Italian as the environment around me. I can say that each language has its own unique challenge and a distinctive history and extraordinary beauty.
Coelho, E. (2016). Understanding second language acquisition. In E. Coelho (Ed.), Adding English: A guide to teaching in multilingual classrooms (pp.153- 182). Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
Cummins, J. (2015). Big ideas for expanding minds: Teaching English language learners across the curriculum. Don Mills, Ontario: Pearson Canada Inc
Flores, S. G. (2016). Assessing English Language Learners: Theory and practice. Chapter 2 (Language, assessment, and English Language Learners) New York: Routledge.
Sept 25, 2019