Author: Leon Sukhdeo (Page 7 of 8)

Most of my family came to America around the same time. I was about four years old and my mom was in her late 20s. We all lived in one apartment and it was about 10 of us. We all spoke the same language and it wasn’t English.  When going to school I thought my language was normal for others. I thought we all spoke the same language. But it turned out that we did. No one could understand me. There was no way I could communicate. I didn’t want to participate in class because I was afraid everyone would get confused about what I’m trying to say. I remember this one time my teacher and I were doing a one on one test. She would point to a picture and I had to say what the picture is. I was doing good until she points to a picture of a hammock. In my mind, I knew what the word is because back home we had one. The problem was I didn’t know what they called it in America. I thought there was another name for it. My teacher kept saying, “keep thinking Leon you got it.” I kept saying it a hammock in my mind the entire time but I never said it out loud, so I chose to not answer. I remember this other time I was at a birthday party. All my cousins were there and a few of their friends. My cousins knew I speak English and “broken” English. My cousin told his friend to come to talk to me because they were testing my English. So he came over and we were talking in English and then my cousin came over and I was speaking “broken” English to him and I didn’t realize after they told me. I believe it’s a quick reaction to who we want to speak English to and who we don’t want.

Amy Tan said, “But I do think the English spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular and play a large role in shaping the language of the child. And I believe it affected my results on the achievements test, I.Q. tests, and the SAT.” If my family members all spoke English I believe it would’ve been a lot easier for me to pick up on English. My mom picked up English just like how I did by surrounding ourselves with other people who spoke English. She worked at the airport meeting new people and talking to them and she slowly starting speaking English but just not at home. The only time I hear her speaking English is when she’s on a professional call or she’s at her job otherwise it’s only “broken” English.

Quote 1:  “My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her.” -Page 1

I can relate to this quote. My mother has never heard me read a professional paper or has never read any professional papers that I have created. The reason why is because I don’t want her to hear me sound professional and use big words.  She just won’t understand what I’m saying. In addition, it sort of gives me the feeling of becoming an actual adult when I do try to use big words with her.  Another reason is that my mother always has something to say and if I ever read something professional like a speech I just don’t know what she’s going to say. Overall I agree with this quote.

Quote 2:  “But I do think the English spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular and play a large role in shaping the language of the child. And I believe it affected my results on the achievements test, I.Q. tests, and the SAT.” -Page 2

I do agree with this quote. I believe if your family already knows how to speak English it will be a lot easier for the child to learn English. Learning big words will start to come naturally and used properly. On the other hand, if you have family that doesn’t already know how to speak English, it would be a lot harder for the child to learn English because the only way can be either in school or watching t.v or listening to other people outside of your family speak English.

Quote 3: 

“But I have noticed in surveys – in fact, just ask week – that Asian students, as a whole, always do significantly better on math achievements test than in English. And this makes me think that there are other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might be described as broken or limited.” -Page 3

I sort of agree with this quote. For me, I speak English at home but the rest of my family don’t speak English or at least don’t speak it at home. I can now see why I always do better in math than English class. In addition, some of my friends that I know that don’t speak English at home do better in math and are going towards engineering as a major, and my friends that do speak English at home do better in English class than math class.

Quote 4:

“Like others, I have described it to people as “broken or fractured” English”. Page 2

Many people describe English that isn’t spoken well as “Broken” English including me and my family. I also heard people telling my mom that she speaking broken English and at first I didn’t know what it meant but I later started to pick up on what it meant.

Throughout my life, I wrote countless sentences, countless paragraphs, and countless essays. I always tell my self I’m not a good writer. I never thought I was a good writer. I say that because I never liked reading. I didn’t find it interesting and always thought it was a waste of time. Then high school started and we had to do readings. Lots of readings. I was practically forced to read otherwise I couldn’t get any assignments in. I slowly realized my self-reading without anyone telling me.  I started to become a better reader. I also started to become a better writer but just didn’t realize it. When Mike Bunn says “You are already an author,” I think he means we already have expiereicen in writing. Throughout our school years, we write about different topics. One example is “Should students wear uniforms in school.” I’m sure a lot of us had to write something like that in middle school several times. I remember back in elementary school writing a “book” about my life. I had to draw illustrations and write stories about my self. We then send it out to a place where they make my story into a hardcover book. I believe something as little as that will help me with my career with reading and writing in college mostly because of my creativity.

In Bunn’s article, something that stood out to me the most was when one of his former student Mike said he reads differently based on the text he’s reading. For example, if he’s reading philosophy he’s looking for words such as however, therefore, furthermore and when he’s reading something that’s fiction he looks for how the author adds dialogue within the narration. I think this is important because you can’t always write the same style when there’s a different genre.