Three ways to speak English is a poem performed orally by Jamila Lyiscott. The poem sounds like a comedic piece but actually discusses several important questions. in the poem Jamila talks about how she speaks different types of “Englishes” in different settings such as at home, with friends or in school. for instance speaking formally in school but then using slang when with her friends now she says “you may say that slang sounds unintellectual but to the British our English may seem unintellectual as well” so “who controls articulation because the English language is ever changing” now what i believe she meant by that English is not like math where there is only one answer to the question like one plus one equals two. English is more of a in this context what would be the most appropriate word? and their can be multiple correct answers. for instance how do you greet someone? do you say “hello” or do you say “whats good?” who gets to “control that articulation?’ Furthermore if you were paying attention to what Amy Tan said in my previous essay you’ll know that she felt inclined to talk a different way around her mother then when in school. Now for my own opinion, we are going to categorize English into two different genres, Formal and friendly. while talking to your friends lets say does it feel more appropriate to say “good afternoon” or hey what’s up?” ill let you the reader be the judge of that however i know i would certainly sooner greet a good friend with a “what’s up bro” then a “good evening” it just feels more right for me. That being the case if i was at a job interview i would keep everything cordial and formal. so what is considered proper English?
Author: Charles (Page 10 of 11)
Amy Tan is an Asian American author who’s mother cannot phrase a sentence properly but clearly understands every word spoken to her. Amy thinks that growing up with family like her mom who don’t speak English “properly” has a direct relation between Asian Americans such as her self and the inability to be naturally good at English despite being (generally) good at fields such as engineering (due to be good at math and such) Scientists and linguistics think language is influenced by peers. Amy Tan thinks language spoken, especially in immigrant families plays a large role in shaping how the child talks. The author continues and expresses the opinion that it affects results on achievement tests such as IQ tests and the SAT. Amy points out the staggering number of Asian Americans not going into fields that require high competency in English and decides to “defy ” and heads into an English field and becomes an author in 1985. My opinion of what she says can be both true and false simultaneously and i would say it depends on the person. for instance, yes i grew up with parents who spoke perfect English however in the elementary school in which i attended as a child they taught us how to read multiple languages including other languages that had completely different alphabets and i myself can write in English pretty well (only regret there was not learning the Cryllic alphabet) now although i read and spoke English perfectly and so did my friends who grew up speaking Russian in their house, some of the Russian kids on my wrestling team spoke a heavily accented poorly phrased English despite being born in the united states. so while inclined to mostly agree with Amy i would say it depends on the person but in scenarios where everyone speaks poor English it would be more likely however not for certain as some of my friends have proved to me.
Charles Pessin
How to read like a writer:
Many times when we read we do it purely for the sake of consumption of its content within which is generally how we would usually be reading an article, book or such. However when you read like a writer your taking it word by word piece by piece devouring the material by each word just like an architect may read a blueprint (analogy example). When you read like a writer you work to identify the choices the author has made so you can better understand how such choices might arise in your own writing. furthermore when you read like the writer you are trying to figure out how the text you are reading was constructed so that you learn how to build one for yourself, examine details in order to see how its made. Now you might be asking me “Charles why should/do i need to learn how to read like a writer?’ after all most college students find RLW (Reading like writer) a new and difficult way to read that can be and is very time consuming but RLW can really help you understand how the process of writing is really just a series of choices. And in doing so can help you recognize important decisions you might face and techniques you might want to use when working on your own writing. after reading a passage of writing you ask yourself some of the following questions What is the authors purpose for this piece of writing? who is the intended audience? What is the genre of the text? is this a published or student produced writing? How effective How effective is the language the author uses? is it to formal? to informal? Perfectly appropriate? What kind of evidence does the author use to support his/her claim? statistics? quotes? Personal stories? how effective is this evidence? how are the transitions? and so on and so forth asking such questions while admittedly extremely time consuming but can help to produce a masterpiece of in-depth writing. ask yourself upon learning the authors techniques, can i use this technique to my advantage? And that is why RLW will be extremely advantages towards any new writer.
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