How Ronzoni Italian Foods Helped My Dad Learn English

My dad likes to say he was born in Italy, but he was born in Brooklyn, New York. You will see that his parents left Palermo, Sicily in February 1955 and sailed to America by ship. My nonna (grandmother in Italian) was six months pregnant at the time and was quite ill for the entire month. However, like most immigrants, the only thing that mattered to him was that his son was born in the United States and therefore immediately became a United States citizen. My grandparents immediately settled in a Sicilian-Italian neighborhood called Bensonhurst, and the chosen language was Sicilian, of course. By the time my father was 10 months old, he was saying words in Sicilian and when he was one year old, he was able to collect sentences. So it doesn’t surprise me that my father was able to learn the English language as fast as he was.

With the encouragement of my nonna, from the moment he was able to manipulate a pencil, my father began to trace and then copy the letters on the shopping boxes that my grandmother brought home every day from the supermarket. He chuckles every time he can tell the story of how Ronzoni products not only filled his stomach, but his mind as well. Dad says he used to get very angry if his mom put the groceries away before he had a chance to trace and / or copy the letters on the supermarket checkout counter. Nonna would have to take out all the boxes she had stored in the pantry to satisfy my dad.

Nonna, who naturally didn’t speak any English, would sit with my dad and teach him the names of the letters. However, the Italian language consists of 21 letters (there are no H, J, K, W, X) as opposed to the 26 letters of the English language. So he didn’t learn the names of these letters until first grade started (there wasn’t a kindergarten class available at the time).

Dad likes to show off his perfect handwriting because the only “A” he received in his first semester of school was calligraphy, a direct result of his meticulous tracing and copying of the letters on grocery products.

How did all this lead to dad learning the English language so fast? “The familiarity with the letters and their sounds made learning quite easy for me,” he says. The only thing he had little trouble with was learning the names and proper pronunciation of the letters H, J, K, W and X in English, but even that, he said, didn’t take long. I asked him if there was the equivalent of “Sesame Street” in his day that helped accelerate his learning of the English language. “The only ‘Sesame Street’ he knew of was somewhere downtown. We didn’t even have a television, he laughs. What we did have instead were nagging mothers and nuns who were persistent and tireless in their teaching efforts, despite the huge classes assigned to them. “

“After teaching the students the names and pronunciation of each letter, the nuns began teaching us vowel and consonant sounds. Only after the vast majority of the class had mastered the pronunciations did they begin to teach us three-letter words. Each word was presented with a picture to help us remember the spelling, pronunciation, and meaning. Each individual student had to pronounce the word, spell it, and pronounce it again, before we could move on.

Once we were familiar with enough people, places, and things, we began to learn simple verbs like run, hit, jump, catch, fall, etc. We also drew the sentences, what I mean is that if the sentence were: ‘The boy hit the ball’, we would have a picture of a boy, a bat and the ball. It was a constant reinforcement. Looking back, I guess they were trying to engage as many of our senses as possible, which I understand accelerates learning. “

My dad is really excited about this topic. However, he makes it clear that he does not like the teaching modalities used in primary school today. In particular, he hates children’s code, a technique that teaches them to spell words, as if they were sounds. To clarify why my father is so “prepared” in the way some elementary schools operate is that although my father was once a very successful investment banker in 1994, he suffered a malignant brain tumor that left him disabled. and so he became Mr. Mom. Being able to stay home allowed him to become something of my personal tutor, and in turn, he was able to see how I regressed and progressed in school. The children’s code, he claims, is something he wishes had never been invented.

“If you were teaching Italian, this would be a great way to teach children to read because every letter and letter combination in the Italian language is pronounced the same way each and every time. In English, we have so many homonyms and different pronunciations for the same words, as well as mysterious silent letters, which are confusing enough, but when combined with the child’s spell is detrimental to student learning. ”

I wish I could have been in one of those classes that forbid kids code enforcement, but unfortunately I wasn’t so lucky. Kid code for me and my classmates back then still struggles to spell the simplest words sometimes. Although in my mind there is no reason to use such a method, I believe that some teachers rely on children’s code to see what levels of spelling their students are at. Other teachers, however, I think they use this methodology out of sheer laziness, which in all honesty is what I think was the case with my teachers.

“What was wrong with Dick and Jane?” My father asks rhetorically. I replied anyway, “I don’t know”, I said, “I learned the children’s code, remember.” “I remember, and that’s why you and Al’s Gals (my friends affectionately call themselves Al’s Gals to this day) can’t spell for beans,” she says. I can’t argue with the fact that we are a generation of poor spellwriters and I think he’s right, that the children’s code is to blame, at least to some extent. “Dad, let’s talk about ‘Dick and Jane’ if you don’t mind.” “Ann Marie, they were primers used in the early grades of elementary school. Each page was illustrated and had no more than a sentence or two. So even if you couldn’t figure out what was being said in the written word, almost No certainly being able to infer it from the illustration. I think the same could be said for Dr. Seuss’s books as well, although the absurd stories at times, I think they had a negative effect. “

“How long did the nuns continue to use ‘Dick and Jane’?” I asked. “Just for first grade, then we had anthologies that contained a bit more sophisticated language, still accompanied by illustrations. At some point during second grade, Mrs. McNamara introduced us to new one-volume storybooks, still with illustrations. , and this process continued grade after grade. By the time I had finished fifth grade, I had a complete vocabulary and good reading comprehension skills. At the beginning of sixth grade, a friend’s father started taking us to the public library every Saturday in the morning. It was a mile walk. There was a limit of four books, which we discussed with the librarian on each visit. Around the same time, I started writing stories for the amusement of my classmates and you will have fun with this. , the girls started asking me to write love notes for them to give to their boyfriends. I was the Cyrano de Bergerac of my time. “

I recently learned of a conversation my dad had with two former sixth graders, who later got married. The woman was one of my father’s former clients, for whom he had performed his literary magic. Apparently, the woman had never told her husband about the true author of many of her letters, until that conversation. All three laughed hysterically when they pulled the proverbial cat out of the bag.

I asked Dad if there was anything else that could have helped me learn and master English as well as he did. I was surprised by his response. “I think nonna had an influence on me. (Ironically, nonna had never passed third grade). Not only did she help me learn the alphabet, she would sit with me and we would read the assignments together. Since at that time, I knew more than She who had become a teacher. That was another way to reinforce what I had learned in class, and teaching Nonna contributed greatly to my love of reading. “

As I contemplate how Dad learned to master English at such a young age, without the slightest knowledge of the language, what stands out most is Nonna’s involvement in the process. This is certainly an element that is missing in our society today, mainly due to two families of workers. As a future elementary school teacher, I plan to replicate the teaching methods of those nuns who taught my dad and many other people not only to read but also to love reading. If the “Dick and Jane” books are not part of the curriculum, wherever I start teaching, I will continue to use the inherent “Dick and Jane” method. For more information about me and my family, visit our website lunchbagnotes.com [http://www.lunchbagnotes.com]