How I Grew to Love Literature
Thal, Eric

[People talking in background]

>>SPEAKER: Your name?

>>ERIC: My name is Eric Thal.

>>SPEAKER: And what is your literacy narrative about?

>>ERIC: My literacy narrative, currently I'm a PhD student, a candidate in comparative literature in which part of our course work we're required to read and compose in different languages. [Inaudible] I also read and write in French as well as other languages. It's interesting because every once in a while my mother will remind me that I hated reading and [Laughing] and I was in the lowest reading group up to third grade. It was kind of ironic now that I'm pursuing an advanced degree in literature whereas when I was young I really disliked a lot of - in retrospect now when I go back and look at or remember some of the stories we had to read in let's say first or second grade. At that time, which was in the early 80's, so much of the pedagogy was influenced I think a lot by multiculturalism in which we were forced to read stories about various people and I found that the stories - I didn't think that the stories were authentic but were designed or crafted to represent various populations in American and around the world whereas we're not actual, for example, writers from let's say Europe or from Asia writing about Asian Americans. I would say they were crafted to be put into the textbook. I was not very interested in those texts but when I got into the sixth grade it was where I really started to pick up reading. I had this really strange setback in which I was given detention for reading during science class. Of course my parents were furious because for years they tried to get me to be reading and then I'm getting punished for doing exactly what they wanted me to do all along. So I developed a strong interest in literature, particularly in American literature, and as I went through high school I would not only read the texts that were assigned for my literature courses but would read texts outside; if we had to read one author I would read two books from the same author. I started up to this point in reading. At the same time I remember for some reason in ninth grade I had a history project in which I had to do a research paper because for ninth grade we only had to do four to five pages. I remember spending an entire Saturday working on it and getting it to the way I wanted where it ended up being nineteen pages. But for me at that time not only was it a chore - it wasn't a chore, I actually like to do research and I liked doing the writing, but I found myself really enjoying the process of reading and writing. When I went to college I ended up majoring in French so all throughout high school I studied French and my father's side of the family is from France. I had exposure to the French language and though I could understand it I wouldn't speak, I would be very hesitant. I started to learn the grammar and learning the verb cases. When I went to college one of my main interests was to spend my junior year abroad, which I did. I studied in Rouen, France in the North in which I basically I followed the first year literature track of students. That was a great exposure to me and I think that solidified my fluency in French. Right before I graduated college then, I got an opportunity to go to China and right after I graduated I decided to prolong the process and go instead because this was a great opportunity and this was in 1998. I was in a group that was the first group of Americans who were legally allowed to formally teach and be hired by the city government to teach in China. So I taught English abroad; mostly conversationally but I also taught a reading class and had a tutor on the site. In my stay there it also got my interest in ESL of which I pursued graduate level course work in ESL as well as I started getting an interest in the Chinese language. So I started learning a lot. I came back to the United States and ended up teaching French in high school, went back to China for a while [Inaudible] in which I continued studying Chinese. After a few years I decided to continue the PhD track and I decided to kind of put my interests in English, writing, French, and Chinese altogether in comparative literature. So that's what I've been doing in the last few years and currently I'm writing my dissertation. Right now I'm on chapter three and I'm writing every day. [Laughing]

>>SPEAKER: Fantastic, that's a lovely story. Let's hope I have this on.