Literacy in My Life III

I went up early this morning to call my friends in China. It was always fun to talk to old friends. This time I called one of my high school friends, with whom I have been living in the same dorm for a year. She told me about a lot of things happened on our old friends. She is really lucky that she went to the university together with two high school classmates. They are really good friends now and as she said “living the same life as in high school”. After hanging up the phone, I felt quite pleased but there is something that is different from the feeling of talking with her in high school. I think for a while and came up with an answer that we were talking in different ways. She is talking like how we talk in high school, using some special words or ways of expression we invented and used often in three years school life. However, I am getting used to a new way of talking with Chinese friends here and sometimes I have to think for a second about how to answer her in her or my past expression pattern. The change of my expression pattern made me miss my high school life and amazed me by the rapidness. I think the expression pattern is an important part of literacy. Just like an American may not understand a British’s jokes even though they both speak English. The differences in expression patterns are due to different language environments where we live in. The change of expression pattern is a part of our adaptation to a new environment and sometimes it happens much more quickly than you expect.