Development is a Dish Best-Served Cold

Who knew I would make it to the end of the semester still sane with all my hair left? Definitely not me. With trials and tribulations, this semester has taught me a lot in a span of so little time. For it to come to an end is a bittersweet moment: bitter because I enjoyed taking this Language and Literacy class and I wont have it again, but sweet because as I look back onto all I have done, I realize I’ve accomplished various milestones. The beginning of the semester acted as phase 1, which held my first big assignment: my language narrative. Writing about my personal experiences or anything pertaining to me was never one of my strong suits so you can only imagine the doubts I had before, during, and after writing my language narrative. At first, it was hard for me to find a core memory to kick off of because so many situations affected the way I write and speak. But with outlining and outside help, I summed it down to the most important ones and got to typing away. Written in my cover letter for this assignment, I state, “The most significant insight that I have gained from writing this narrative is that some people can have a mix of all their languages combined into one, perfectly crafted for their own self and/or region.” (Windett 1) How I speak on a day to day basis consists of mostly Standard American English, New York slang, and Jamican Patois. I usually use the syntax of patois while stating something in Standard American English, without even realziing it. Just with this assignment alone, I learned one-third of the course’s learning objectives. The first one being able to recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering, oppressing, and hierarchizing languages and their users, and be open to communicating across different languages and cultures. The personal essay “Mother Tongue” (Autumn 1990) by Chinese-American author, Amy Tan, is what gave me the foundation for this understanding. Many people are judged by the way they speak or write and have their intelligence questioned, especially in America. It can be used as a loophole for racism, if you don’t speak Standard American English, “you’re not fit for the job”, “you can’t receive this service”, “I refuse to help you”. Which creates further social structures filled with discriminations and inequality. The second learning objective that I’ve learned through this assignment is the ability to develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. I learned how to properly annotate texts, such as “Mother Tongue”, I wrote drafts before turning in the final language narrative in, and my peers reviewed my drafts as well as I did theirs. The final learning objective this assignment taught me was the ability to understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences. My peers and I used Google Drive to share our drafts and ideas with each other. We also had discussion boards every two weeks that consisted of a different topic each time, all relating to language of course. This allowed us to share our ideas and respond to others’ ideas.

The second phase of the semester is when I was completely iintorudced to something new, yet enticing. Anytime I heard the term “rhetorical” I’ve always thought of rhetorical questions. Do I even go to school? Haha, no pun intended. But no seriously, I was like whatttt the flip does this lady mean? So rhetoric in the literal-sense is the strategies an author uses to get across their idea, whether it be the choice of words they use, structure of their piece, or what type of piece they chose to write. This phase taught me a bit more of the learning objectives. The first one it taught me was the ability to explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. With all the texts we read and analyzed in class for phase 1 of the semester, we analyzed with a rhetorical lens for the second one. We analyzed anecdotes, books, TED talks, and many more. The second phase of the semester also taught me how to recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations. The charting worksheet where we chose the text to write our rhetorical analysis about mainly helped me achieve this objective. The three rhetorical appeals pathos, logos and ethos became my best friends throughout this phase and made recognizing rhetorical strategies easier. Moreover, the second phase also taught me to engage in the collaborations and social aspects of writing processes by having my peers review the drafts of mtv rhetorical analysis and grouping together to write a rhetorical precis for a text of our choice. Another objective the second phase taught me was to compose texts that integrate my stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation. The rhetorical and language narrative analysis have equally shared the responsibility for this learning objective. I summarized, interpreted, and analyzed Amy Tan’s anecodte, “Mother Tongue”, for my rhetorical analysis as well as two of my peers’ language narratives.  The final learning objective this second phase has taught me was to pratice systematic application of citation conventions. I learned how to use MLA format and also had to cite videos and texts. 

The last phase has been a blur to me because of external ongoings in my life. Nonetheless, it was very educational. I don’t feel like I was doing my best during this phase because it was so hard for me to stay focused. Who knew i would still learn something, the last learning objective. I learned to locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias. This phase was mostly about research for our I-Search project. We had two remote library visits and learned how to discern sites for trustworthy information. We also learned how to navigate websites like Jstor.org to research topics.

All in all, this has been a successful semester, ignoring the fact that there was a fall of the Kasia Empire. It took time and teensy-weensy steps to learn all the objectives that I have. To reflect and see myself learn all of them is refreshing, especially when I haven’t been feeling too confident as a student. This semester was educational and developmental, it will live freely in my head. 

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.