In the three articles “Do you Speak American” by Robert Macneil, “Why Good English is Good for You” by John Simon, and “Lost in America” by Douglas McGray they all share the same theme that Americans lack the motivation to be culturally diverse and broaden their horizons outside of the American Culture due to the lack of funds. This basically means that Americans lack the motivation to learn more about their culture and other cultures because they focus more on fitting in and doing the same thing as all other Americans. They lose the drive to be different and to educate themselves based on where they came from. In “Do You Speak American”, Macneil emphasizes how even though we have different cultures within America, we are all “Americanized” …show more content…
334)”, this is explaining that Americans are not being properly educated. They have to teach themselves what is right and wrong when it comes to the English language. They are unable to look up to older authorities to help them therefor they cannot broaden their horizons when it comes to the English language and culture. In “Lost In America” McGray says, “ The president’s language may promise $24 million to promote foreign-language instructions in K-12 schools, but that seems pretty paltry compared to the $206 million he requested to fund abstinence-only sex education”(McGray Pg. 356), this proves that our priorities are focused elsewhere and not on our language and culture. This compares to the previous article because without proper funding we are lacking the ability to learn, therefore having to teach ourselves; which leads to improper learning. In “Do You Speak American” Macneil says, “ You do have to be bilingual in this country, which means you can be very adept at slang”(MacNeil Pg.311), this goes against the first two articles because it is basically saying that you have to do be very fluent in slang but if we were educated in proper English then we would not know
In ““English Only” Laws Divide and Demean” Warren J. Blumenfeld discusses the laws that make the official language in the United States English, only. His purpose is to persuade the reader to sign the petition he created which is directed to the Iowa House of Representatives and more to abolish the “English only”. Although Blumenfeld does an exceptional job appealing to the emotions of his audience by using personal stories, he does a poor job presenting evidence and facts to persuade the reader to agree with him. Blumenfeld may have personal credentials, but he does not have many source credentials, also, he does not provide counter arguments for the arguments that are made against his.
Lisa Delpit in Chapter 4 was questioning, What Should Teachers Do? Delpit was arguing as an educator that you shouldn’t force a child to speak English that’s from another country or culture. Constantly forcing the child will cause a gap in a relationship with the student; destroying confidence of learning and questioning or possibly even disrespecting. Instead of being too critical, Delpit states that you should learn the child’s culture/country to form a positive bond between the student and teacher. Some ideas that were given was creating a bilingual dictionary for both the teacher & student, having the students teacher each other language/culture, reading entertainment such as comic books, recording the students speak English to perfect
The focus of this essay is how immigrants have changed American. Joel L. Swerdlow, in “Changing American,” demonstrates why it takes 2 generations become successful: Language, Culture, and Economy. First of all, Language is one of the big problem that a second generation take when people come to another country (please) in "Changing American" by Joel L. Swedlowb tell us ' ' In 1990 some 32 million U.S. residents spoke a language other than English at home, and more than 7 million lived in households with no fluent English speaker over 14 years old. ' ' It is a problem for the second generation to be successful because their parent doesn 't help them in their home in the language.
What does every American need to know today? Scratch that. What should every American need to know today? Hence, in today’s society, the standard language of “English” is translucent from the high-so proper English and to the streets of slang. Forget being monolingual, when speaking proper English intertwine with slang, one is already bilingual.
Lisa Miller states in her article that a quick rate of globalization in corporate economics, government ways in knowledge and music is at great risk to American wealth. I feel like Miller makes a good and alarming fact. I feel like the duty of the future of America rests on this present generation. Miller then goes on to say that if we do not learn to achieve some level of foreign language that somehow America’s success will disappear.
Mr. Young is passionate about his belief that teaching US Standard English as an anchor is a threat to people who he refers to as “multiculturals” (Young 111). It is interesting to observe that he uses his first vernacular to express himself, but uses the rules of US Standard English to write it with. This use of his preferred language made the article difficult to read, and understand unless the reader was very familiar with that dialect. His dedication to his opinion came across to this reader as extremely aggressive in tone.
“One of the greatest glories of the public school was its success in Americanizing immigrants” Christakis quoted Ravitch in paragraph 20 is what surprised me because I have never heard of this concept before. Personally, I believe that would depend on the student. For example, one of my friends is from the Democratic Republic of Congo (Africa) and at first she was not really Americanized, like she did not use slang, she was not procrastinating. But, as time went on she made more American friends and became accustomed to America that was when she did start using slang and procrastinating. I agree with Christakis when she said “public schools also provide students with crucial exposure to people of different backgrounds and perspectives.”
In this story Salva was hard working to survive he may not have want to do it but he had to so he could survive. “Salva had never been so hungry. He stumbled along, somehow moving one foot ahead of the other.
Simonitsch and Lambert intel that the city of San Francisco was underfunded due to the overwhelming of immigrates of LEP students and made the students submerse into the English language (2004). Ultimately, the programs in San Francisco are failing at maintenance of bilingual education to static and developmental maintenance. Barker refers that static maintenance is to target language skills by maintaining them and developmental maintenance is to reach the student’s home language into a full proficiency of full biliteracy or literacy; also, known as Enrichment Bilingual Education (2011). It is important to know that indoctrinating the children into an English language culture is effecting their developmental stages. Due to these failed practices,
According to Peter Salins, in his essay Assimilation, American Style, “Assimilation, American style has always been much more flexible and accommodating, and consequently much more affective in achieving its propose”, which is to conform to the American culture while keeping your native culture as well (Salins, 599). Some people claim that by having one culture you increase your chances of being successful they believe “Either Immigrants bring themselves “up” to the native cultural standards or they are doomed to live “out” of the charmed circle of the national culture”, but Salins states otherwise. Salins made it clear
Being born and raised in a culture and then uprooting your life to pursue opportunities in a different culture can be hard in three ways. First, speaking a foreign language and then coming to America where majority of the people speak English can be difficult to adapt to. When a person has grown accustomed to speaking their native language, it can be problematic to have to pick up an entire new language. Possibilities can be limited because of the restrictions on one’s ability to communicate with other. Second, if a teenager comes to America from a foreign country they will have to take on responsibilities that they normally would not.
“What Every American Should Know” by Eric Liu thoroughly examines the issue of cultural literacy and its place in modern America. It presents a convincing argument against E.D. Hirsch’s book on the same topic which included some 5000 things that he thought defined cultural literacy and every American should know. Liu argues that America has changed over time, becoming more multicultural, and to capture the cultural literacy of the country, no one person should sit down and propose what they think everyone else should know. Instead he suggests that in order to capture a contemporary view of the nation, every American should be involved in the making of the list. The most engaging part of this article is Liu’s idea that this new crowd-sourced
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
Academic English is important to college and university in academic writing course (Jet Writers Essay Writing Contest 2015). It is required students to reading, speaking and listening, while employing evaluating and sharpen their research and writing skills for college and university environment. At the college and university level is the ever-increasing need for students to focus on language and more specifically, the specialized language found both in substance areas and the Academic Language used in teaching that content. Academic Language as the name implies is importance the kind of writing that we are required to do in college and university. It differs from other kinds of writing such as annotated bibliographies, literature reviews,
Grammar is a system and structure of language. To me grammar is more than just knowing the rules and standards; it is being able to apply them in writing. Growing up I was taught all of the grammar rules through many grammar worksheets. However, my Pedagogical Grammar class gave me a new outlook on how to teach grammar. I will use strategies learned from my peers, research, experience, and my grammar class to explain how I will teach my students grammar.