Setting a positive environment for students to engage in and become comfortable with their surroundings is an effective way to aid students. Teachers have a great impact on how students learn to apply their academic literacy. When the support is there, students know, and feel more free to apply themselves. A fellow student wrote about her teacher that "Without the positive experience I had in the beginning of my French career I don't know that I would still be studying the language today." (Hansen 1). The teacher helped the author gain a confidence and set a tone that is still with her today.

Without my first grade teacher, Mrs. Dorothy Williams, I do not believe I would have the passion to re

In most of the narratives we had the opportunity to read, the authors wrote about how their academic literacy took them to new places, helped them experience new things, gain a general new understanding. Although a person may choose to not apply academic literacy instantly while learning, for fear of their self-confidence resulting in conflict, the skills they learned early on can help them in the future. While learning many languages and applying them to the numerous parts of her life, Min-zhan Lu was apprehensive about sharing her talents with the surrounding community. Communist China was not the location for her to partake on her academic success with others. While she attempted to write, it was not until the death of her mother when she finally had the opportunity to express her talents. Even though she had to wait many years before she utilized her academic literacy, it was still inside her, and she used it to express how she felt.

Not only past heritage, but current living and family situations come under a better understanding with academic literacy. Growing up bilingual helps students learn both of their native language, and of their new language. While one language is crucial to their outside-the-home survival, the other is meant to keep the home life together. Min-zhan Lu demonstrated this in her narrative "From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle." Growing up in China, she was taught English to survive in the global community. On the other hand, even though her parents did stress the importance of English, making her and her sisters speak it even at home, they still held ties and spoke Shanghai dialect with the servants. This kept her ties to the modern world and her family ties still fresh, and she learned more and more about each while exploring and developing her language.

Academic literacy plays a role in everybody's life, and is impa

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