alex boyd domain analysis

8/2/2019 Alex Boyd Domain Analysis

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Alex Boyd

English 1101

19 January 2012

Home Work

My family: Mother, Father, two older

brothers, and a younger sister

I was raised in predominately middle toupper middle class neighborhoods

My father is a retired Navy Commander P3pilot and two time astronaut finalist.

My mother is a professional piano player

and teacher.

I come from a strong Christian family withheavy emphasis on the bible.

Foul language was never tolerated in my

house

My mother raised us on classical music and

show tunes. Rock music was not allowed

until later in life.

Reading was always encouraged but not

mandatory unless for school

We would sometimes have family biblestudies but never read together.

As a child it was common for my mother to

read to me at night while scratching my

back.

My father started writing novels later in lifeand is now a published author. This love of

writing is not shared throughout the family.

Little Rosies Mexican Cantina: I workedhere in high school; I picked up on some

basic Spanish from dealing with the illegal

immigrant cooks.

The menu selection became like a 2nd

language to me.

Taking orders wasnt scripted but was

always in a very similar fashion.

I had to learn how to deal with confused andsometimes angry customers.

It was an extremely popular restaurant anddealt with lots of people.

United States Marine Corps: Recon Marine

Learned the phonetic alphabet.

Had to learn military commands for every

thing from marching to Call for Fire

techniques.

Much of the lingo was traditional naval talk;

many words were contrary to normallanguage.

Ink stick for a pen, bulkhead for a wall,scuttlebutt for gossip and of course military

time.

Best Buy Home theater: post military, pre

college job.

Some of the skills I had from the restaurant

came into play when talking to customers.

They have a set way of selling a TV, from

how you introduce yourself with small talkto closing the sale.

I learned many new technical terms

regarding high-end audio and video

equipment.


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School Neighborhood / Community / Peers

Kindergarten- 3rd grade: Fredericksburg

Christian School, Fredericksburg VA

Much of my early development was at aprivate Christian school.

Phonics was the primary form of teaching toread.

Heavy emphasis on the bible.

The teachers were good and gave me thetools to learn quickly.

Fourth and fifth grade: Hampton Cove

elementary, Huntsville Al

Teaching style was much different in public

school. More visual influence and handheld slower

learning.

Moving to Alabama I had to pick on newdialect.

The accelerated reader program introduced

to get you to read, and take tests on the

books on the computer.

Basic math and grammar games were

played on the computers in the library.

Middle School: Huntsville Middle School.

The school was a mixture of upper middleclass white kids and kids from the projects.

Nothing in-between.

I learned a lot of new foul language starting

middle school as most probably do.

Writing essays began to be introduced moreheavily as well as poetry.

Puberty definitely put a damper on thelearning process.

Not the best teaching staff, many studentsbegan their path to failure there.

High school: Huntsville High School

Same socioeconomic classes

Learning was difficult with the heavy

Fredericksburg Virginia: Birth till 9.

Video games were just beginning to emerge

but spent most of my time outside withfriends, which helped develop strong social

skills.

Mostly white middle class.

Va is considered the south, but being a D.C.

suburb it was a melting pot of people fromaround the nation.

I picked up more of a northern dialog thansouthern; I never say yall or aint.

Huntsville Alabama: 9-18

Being a large defense industry andengineering town it was another large mix

of people and not as heavy a southerninfluence as you would think.

Hippie music has a huge influence there, i.e.

Phish, Widespread Panic, Grateful Dead.

This influenced my appreciation of music

and art greatly.

Outdoors activities were very popular thereand my love of nature grew from that.

You pull for Alabama or Auburn. Period.

And most people went to one of theseschools.

I felt that academia was not as much my

thing and enlisted in the military.

Military Career 18-22: San Diego CA,

Beaufort SC, Wilmington NC, NowzadAfghanistan, Wilmington NC (in no

particular order)

I was around everyone from people from

Boston to Puerto Rico to Russia.

Depending on who I was hanging out with

could influence the words I used to the

accent I spoke with.


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influence of drugs and girls.

I left high school with zero study skills as

the curriculum was in no way challenging.

Reading was required; many classicalliterature pieces were studied.

I did many research essays and very littlefree form creative writing.

1. Home: Its hard to say how my family influenced my reading and writing, the way I

operate is much different than much of my family. They were motivating and tried to get meto perform to the best of my ability but for some reason I always resisted anything academic.

I would say probably the best thing they did was pushed my creativity in other aspects such

as building things. My father was always teaching me how to create things like catapults,bow and arrows out of trees, which spawned my interest in engineering. That capacity for

creativity can spill over to my writing. So I guess in a way the indirectly greatly influenced

my writing :/

2. Work: If work did one thing through the years, it taught me to understand differentcultural dialects. People in California talk much differently than people from Massachusetts.That said Mexicans talk totally different that Afghans. Marines I worked with from Puerto

Rico were some of the hardest. Not everyone that enlists from there speaks great English, and

when your commanding officer speaks broken English life can be difficult. Learning otherlanguages was never something I was good at but I still remember some Spanish and Arabic

words that I encountered at work often.

3. School: School has a large impact on everyones literacy, probably more so than anything

else. You spend the majority of your adolescence at school; you will get rubbed off on. Im

sure the way I speak and present myself is a consequence of where I went to school, even if Idont see it. The biggest thing for me would be my taste in music; jam bands were a huge

part of my high school. To this day I think people in that high school would kill themselves if

Phish told them too. I chose to be different than the people I graduated with which lookingback was a fantastic decision. Not one of my friends graduated college, most never tried.

Now I have a far different outlook on learning, I need it, and thanks to the Huntsville school

system I have some catching up to do.


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4: Neighborhood, Community, and Peers: My adolescence was primarily spent in white,

middle class neighborhoods. This shaped my vocabulary more than anything; I never pickedup one heavy accent. My Marine Corps career was very influential though, If I didnt have

friends from California when I moved out there I probably wouldnt have know what hella

meant. My Midwestern friends taught me what cheese curds are in Wisconsin, and my NewEngland friends taught me how to properly use the word wicked if Im in Boston.

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