Confident Relationships Built on Language Wouldn’t it be exciting to grow up learning more than one language? Imagine being in Japan for a week on vacation with a group of friends, and one day decided to go to the oldest zoo in Japan, Ueno Zoo. To get to Ueno Zoo, riding the bullet train was a necessity, except knowing which line was the correct line, when to get off the bullet train, or even which ticket to buy was a daunting task. Nobody in your group has the confidence to ask the workers for help since they don’t have the knowledge of Japanese to help them. So everybody agrees to head back to the hotel to plan something else considering nobody knew how to speak a bit of Japanese, and that inability to communicate hurt your group’s confidence …show more content…
Richard Rodriguez and Gloria Anzaldúa are two authors who both immigrated to America in the 1950s and received first hand experience of the assimilation process into American society. During this time, Rodriguez and Anzaldúa had struggled adjusting to the school system. Since understanding English was difficult, it made adjusting to the American school system increasingly difficult for Rodriguez. Whereas Anzaldúa, on the other hand, had trouble adjusting to America’s school system due to the fact that she didn’t wish to stop speaking Spanish even though she could speak English. Both Rodriguez and Anzaldúa had points in their growing educational lives where they had to remain silent since the people around them weren’t interested in hearing them speaking any other language than English. The silence that immigrants experience when assimilating into a new culture is not always a sign of social control. That silence is their confidence with the new language, and …show more content…
The silence is a transition period, where the immigrants find their new voice that they can use confidently in their new society. During this time, immigrants would stop using their native language and just do their best to use the new one. As a result from them doing that, their use and understanding of the language increases, and their confidence to use what they know grows. Rodriguez went through a phase similar to what was just mentioned. When Rodriguez was young, he would speak in English in school or in stores near his house, and when Rodriguez would get home from school he would speak Spanish (72). Rodriguez’s English was not the best, and because of that he would either be silent or quietly mumble when asked to participate by one of the nuns (73). Since his lack of participation was noticeable and showed little progress, some of his teachers visited Rodriguez’s home to ask his parents to “encourage your children to practice their English when they are home?” (73). Rodriguez one day walks in on his parents speaking Spanish, but when they see him they switch to English, which offends and over the days that follows angers him enough to decide to seriously learn English. Rodriguez even willingly decides to participate in class (74). Rodriguez would speak English in school because to him it was a “public language”, while Spanish was a “private language” (72). Rodriguez
Rodriguez’s viewpoint in “Aria” and Thiong’o’s ideas are similar in a way that they both agree with the fact that having non-native English speaker to learn English by abandoning their mother language will hinder their close relationship with their culture and family. However, Rodriguez believes that the most effective way for immigrants to learn English is to totally leave their mother language behind because this allows the immigrants to learn English in the fastest way, and the immigrants will have the confidence to fit into the American society when their English is fluent. However, Thiong’o sees more cons than pros regard to the idea of letting non-native speaker to learn a second language in a forceful and extreme way. First, he states
In the online article by Max J. Castro, Ph. D, The Future of Spanish in the United States, the author effectively uses his credibility to link facts and history of other languages to Spanish along with appealing to the reader’s emotions to explain why the longevity of the Spanish language is possibly threatened in the United States. In his article, Castro refers to a plethora of statistical information about Spanish as a language in the United States, including that it is predicted to be the largest Spanish speaking country in the world by 2050. Even today Spanish is by far the second most spoken language in America, second only to English. Although the amount of Spanish speakers is increasing, Castro also mentions in his article, largely concerned,
Spanish was the language that created this bond and closeness within his family that was unbreakable. After struggles in school, Rodriguez parents decided it was time to push him and his siblings to adapt to a different language (English). Six months later he spoke English fluently while losing the Spanish speaking side of himself. According to Rodriguez, “I came to feel guilty.
In his article, Dan Carsen discusses the challenges with bilingual education in the Southern United States. Although he recognizes the obstacles present in this system, Carsen does argue for bilingual education. By appealing to ethos, pathos, and logos, Carsen properly describes the difficulties and importance in implementing bilingual education in the South. Carsen successfully appeals to ethos by conducting several personal interviews to capture real-world experiences. The first interview mentioned in the article is with Angelina Baltazar, a bilingual student at Tarrant High School.
Very few, if any, immigrants have the chance to learn English before traveling to the U.S. Because of this barrier, it is nearly impossible for organizations such as the Border Patrol to warn, aid, and communicate with them as they travel to the U.S. Although there are helpful signs along the border, they are written in English and are therefore indecipherable. Furthermore, the language border hinders an immigrant’s ability to survive in American society once they arrive. English is the written and spoken language in almost every city, thwarting immigrants’ opportunity to find jobs and interact with others. As they struggle to communicate, they become ostracized and do not fit in.
Imagine what it is like to be seven years old moving to a country where you don’t know anyone, you don’t understand the language, and everything seems foreign. When I first arrived to the United States, I didn’t have friends due to my inability to speak English. It wasn’t an easy journey, but my determination to achieve the American Dream gave me strength to keep going. I decided to take English courses during my free time, and now I am a great writer who is fluent in both English and Spanish.
Roberts, Edgar V, and Robert Zweig. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Pearson Education, 2015. Print. "Sorry, I Don't Speak Spanish: Hispanics Deal with the Loss of Spanish Fluency."
My Rhetorical Analysis Language is a part one’s identity and culture, which allows one to communicate with those of the same group, although when spoken to someone of another group, it can cause a language barrier or miscommunication in many different ways. In Gloria Anzaldua’s article, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, which was taken from her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, she is trying to inform her readers that her language is what defines her. She began to mention how she was being criticized by both English and Spanish Speakers, although they both make up who she is as a person. Then, she gave convincing personal experiences about how it was to be a Chicana and their different types of languages. Moreover, despite the fact that her language was considered illegitimate, Anzaldua made it clear that she cannot get rid of it until the day she dies, or as she states (on page 26) “Wild tongues can’t be, they can only be cut out.”
In her article, “Teach Them Spanish Early, Too,” Carlene Carmichael questions why young Californians are not being taught a basic understanding of both the English and the Spanish language. Carmichael contends that more job opportunities are available to bilingual applicants. She suggest that children could be taught both languages together from a young age. Carmichael pities the many Americans who are barred from employment at bilingual businesses because of this disadvantage and she wonders if anyone else feels the same. Carmichael’s suggestion to offer Spanish curriculum to young children and teach both English and Spanish at the same time makes a lot of sense; After all, California does recognize both English and Spanish as official
He later found the different between the two languages. For example, classroom language is the same as public language while home language is the same as private language. Rodriguez felt more comfortable in speaking Spanish, his private language, than English. Therefore causing him to not really participate or speak in class. Out of the blue, his teacher came to visit his family asking “ to encourage your children to practice their English when they are home.
Identity Crisis In “Se Habla Espanol” by Tanya Maria Barrientos, speaking multiple languages at the time of Barrientos being a child, was not perceived as a bonus on your job application. When she was just three years old she was moved to the states and her parents completely stopped using Spanish and taught their children English. They did this in order to provide a better education for their children in America. They knew that if they spoke Spanish, they would be perceived as poor individuals.
For many new immigrants coming to America, it is difficult to adjust into the new society. Many come to America without the basic knowledge of English, the new immigrants do not have the ability assimilate to American society because of the lack of possible communication between the immigrant and an native. Non-English speaking immigrants that come to America face harsh challenges when trying to assimilate to U.S. society because immigrants are often segregated into ethnic communities away from natives, Americans do not know basics of words of other well known languages, and the lack of government funding education programs. Assimilation into a new society is difficult enough, but when the society pushes any new immigrants to separate part
His narrative shows this support and how having instruction in Spanish and English allows him to have higher academics. In less than ten years, one third of students attending public schools will not know English when starting Kindergarten. Are schools and teachers ready for this and will push for bilingual instruction? Is America ready for this? As for now, there is mixed perspectives.
Inside their homes, mostly the top three languages other than English that are spoken are Spanish, Vietnamese, and Urdu. These statistics show that America is made up of many different people and that English doesn’t come very easy for everyone. In many households, growing up English isn’t the first language so when it’s time for school, children struggle with literacy. Most college students nowadays have done a test and realized that the average American college graduates English literacy has declined. The National Assessment of Literacy was given and the test found low English in Hispanic culture.
The articles “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua and “Speaking to My Fathers Dead Dialect” by Joseph Luzzi both are about immigrants who immigrate to The United States for better life prospects and being faced various difficulties such as cultural imperialism, language, low self-esteem and identity construction. On analyzing the life of immigrants, it is primarily essential to indicate that socio-cultural and economic problems depend on their hopes to be integrated in new community. Integration process is somehow difficult because of native’s attitude toward immigrants is dissimilar. Along with socio-cultural and economic problems, the key one is language discriminations because immigrants have poor language skills so that makes