Good morning everyone, my name is Justin Siguencia. Today I would like to talk about a language and literacy moment that had a significant impact on me. First I would like to discuss on the basis of my experience, which is religion. I am catholic and have been my whole life. I love my religion and try my best to better my faith. That’s through church and from prayers. One type of prayer that I do is called the rosary. This prayer was first introduced to me at a very young age. This prayer is one in which is done in a group. Which my family has prayed for even before I was born. To have a new member of this prayer group be me who is American, they certainly had their work cut out for them. Throughout my childhood I learnt both English and Spanish. Enough to be able to do the rosary with them. Though there is one part that after some years I couldn’t do just yet with them. Which was reading Spanish. How come I can’t read well in Spanish? I had done fairly well in my English classes and was a fine enough reader to be above my grade level through elementary and middle school. Yet I can’t read properly because it’s simply a different language? This really got to me as being able to read in Spanish means that I can practice my faith more, since I mainly do so with my family. Though I can’t fully continue along with them if I can’t read with them. Simply switching to English wasn’t on my mind. Since I already picked the language I want to use, it meant that I wouldn’t be able to do it with them if I switched.

     After the rosary we usually do readings from a book. Those readings are what ultimately became my worst enemies. Every attempt at reading had come with mispronunciation, long pauses, asking my mother for help saying every other word, then the facepalms of the rest of my family. What I remember is after the many attempts at reading over the years I had just given up. Every time we did a rosary I had never had the gull to even ask to read. Having said that there did come the moment where that had all finally gone away. Having this occur to me at 13, I wish it could have happened a bit sooner. The day was Christmas Eve and all of us had been praying for a week, with today as the final day of prayer. We had done our prayers and now moved on to the readings. After a couple of readings we got up to the litany. This reading is by far the most difficult reading. Which was so much so that I had never even attempted that reading nor had anyone even suggested it to me to read. Most likely they knew they would have been better off going to sleep by the time I finished. My aunt said “Who wants to read?”. Everyone stayed silent as they themselves didn’t want to as it takes 2 minutes to fully read. That’s when my mother said “ Why don’t you give it a try?”.

    She was looking in my direction, in which I turned to my left knowing full well no one was there. “Wait me?”. “ Yeah, just give it a try,” she said. The rest of my family looked at me with a smile. “This way you get better at reading if you try,” my grandma said. “ Well let’s think about this, do you really want to stay here and miss sleep waiting for me to finish reading”. “We will be here as long as it takes,” my mom said. “Exactly, so just try it” my grandma said. “Fine I’ll do it but don’t get mad at me now”. Once I looked at the page I realized I had way too much reading to do. I started on my first words. They came with stutters and pauses. I looked up and there were no facepalms or exhales of air for me to just get it over with. Looking back down I continued at a fast pace. “We said we would wait so slow down,” my mother said. I took a moment and finished the first sentence. This was going as terribly as I expected. Though it finally clicked to me as I looked at the second sentence. What have I always done when I struggled in English? I would just break down the words. Such a simple understanding for some reason never came across my mind when reading in Spanish. Most likely because I always felt if I didn’t read fast enough my family would be furious. However this time it was different because I was encouraged. I suddenly started to say the first and second words in a quick succession. I continued and by the time I finished half the page it felt as if I had become the most fluent Spanish speaker to ever walk the Earth. The flow of my reading felt impeccable.  After my two pages were done, I looked up. They were all smiling at me. “We knew you could do it” my mother said. From then on I always volunteered to read in the rosary. I was finally able to feel that I was properly practicing my faith and doing it with the people I love. Reading can be a task that many struggle with but like all things it’s better to try than to never do so. Since then I believed it was an early Christmas Miracle that happened to me. Thank you