My brother and I were taught to sign Makaton before we had command of the spoken word and as a result, I could express my needs early on; according to my mother, at 6 months old my first signs were ‘milk’, ‘more’, ‘hot’ and ‘help’ – ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ came later!
As a child I could scarcely be found without a book in hand. I would read all day and into the nights, waking up tired because I was unable to put down the latest Harry Potter, CHERUB or Artemis Fowl. While silent reading, I loved to assign accents and affectations to the characters, really immersing myself in their whole being. I found I was able to evolve my understanding of them by exploring how they might speak their words. My mother had always used different accents, pace and volume when reading aloud to me as a small child and this gave me a curiosity about how words that looked the same on paper could sound quite different when spoken by different people or with a different volume or tone.
As a result of my love for reading, I found myself pouring a great deal of my creative energy into writing. However, as somebody with hypermobility and dyspraxia I found my own writing often discredited for being ‘scruffy’, ‘messy’ and oftentimes ‘illegible’. I was made to believe that I was unable to write, unable to articulate a story in any sort of comprehensive way. This continued through until I was 9 where my teacher suggested I learn to touch-type whilst the other students practiced handwriting. Through months of practice, I learned that I could get my thoughts out as quickly as my brain was producing them, to a legible standard, thanks to the computer.
I realised that the words I had read day in day out, the language I had absorbed through my constant page-turning, worked its way into my writing.
I was finally able to express my voice, and I fell in love with the English language as a result; I had an entire page on my class blog with my writings and it got me noticed. Through my reading and the appropriate tools, I found that I could write and write to a high standard. In my final school report at Junior school, my Head Teacher said he looked forward to reading my first book… it was a powerful comment and I ended GCSE English Language with a Level 9 (A*).
I also found myself facing similar problems when studying Mandarin Chinese in Secondary School. Formation of the characters was proving to be a struggle, as it took me far longer to accurately draw each individual character, resulting in my falling behind in writing exams. At the end of the first year of study I was advised by my teacher to discontinue my study of the language as I would find it too difficult to complete the writing exams. However, I was determined to embrace this historic language, which through my love of ancient history, had intrigued me; the depth and richness of meaning expressed in the written form of Mandarin is, in my opinion, beautiful.
I harnessed my new-found resilience into hours and hours of writing out the characters, using squared paper to fit each character into. I completed my three-year course, able to fully articulate myself in the Mandarin writing exams and gained my Mandarin qualifications.
I was hooked; language was, I realised, a potent mechanism; so flexible I was able to bend, shape, tweak and thereby have a huge impact on my message. I used it both verbally and in the written form to engage, influence, calm down, inspire, motivate and much more. Through this understanding, I began to pay attention to how others use language to communicate. Through my mother’s work I was able to spend time with people who literally had no voice; they had sustained brain injuries which rendered their communication non- verbal. Having learned Makaton as a baby, I was able to have meaningful conversations and the look on their faces as I happily chatted with them was always priceless.
I noticed how politicians seemed to have a communication style of their own, a sort of perceived wisdom or code that many adopted and by listening to their language, I inevitably became interested in their messages. I developed my own moral compass, empathizing with the struggles of the disabled, single mothers, immigrants, the poor or marginalised. I have learned to make the extra effort to understand individuals whose lives are unlike mine, because I know how blithely they might be dismissed by others.
I found myself seeking to understand people whose political views are out of the mainstream, even if I disagree with them. This led me to explore the political landscape in the UK and in the wider world, being fortunate enough to be a teenager in the Trump era most definitely gave me plenty of content worthy of debate!
I now study Politics and International Relations at university and my ambition to be a writer is undoubtedly founded in my early experiences of sign language, expression/intonations when being read to, becoming a prolific reader myself and eventually conquering my own problems to express my voice.
Written for a GoTranscript Scholarship, April 2021
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