WLLN 

Cover Letter 

When this course first started, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I understood what was going to be taught but I didn’t have any expectations of how I was going to feel about any of it. However, that soon changed once more and more concepts were learned and I found myself getting very fascinated with the subjects. I was fascinated with a few topics in particular, such as rhetorical situations. Rhetorical situations are a good way to see how language experiences are affected by different environments and circumstances. Every article we read had similarities in theming, but greatly differed at times in detail and events. This is because no two encounters were the same due to different circumstances taking place. Rhetorical situations are an excellent way of seeing how different geographies, backgrounds and other factors impact the social interactions and reactions of the people in that location. In all the readings, I realized how something as simple as having an accent could affect someone. Even though I’ve had similar experiences to some of the writers, I never thought about on a larger scale how many people could be impacted by these moments of discrimination to say the most, harmful jokes to say the least. This is without a doubt the most important insight I’ve gained. Through these articles I was also 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. To be honest, most people don’t even know I’m polish, I’ve mentioned it more times in this one class than I have in my entire life. I’ve never truly felt the need to express it, naturally the topic of my nationality came up a lot more when I was younger, but I never thought about it after that. These articles made it evident that people of different cultures could be oppressed, but also empowered. It is a matter of mindset to choose how these experiences impact someone. Discrimination could bring a person down and shame them, or a person could grow more pride and stronger from it. Oppression and hierarchies in language is not talked about often in everyday context but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. However, if people are open to expressing and discussing these situations as they are done in the articles, these issues could be addressed more effectively. With all this, it is very important to have an audience, someone that will receive the message you are trying to convey. When it comes to this paper, I could obviously say the audience is the professor and my classmates, but that’s not entirely true. While they are audience members, if this were to be a public paper, I would want anyone who is interested to be in the audience. Perhaps that means people with similar experiences to me, or maybe that is someone just fascinated the topic. I feel like isolating anyone would ruin the purpose of a paper like this one. I feel that including everyone despite experiences is a good way to share a topic you believe in. With all that being said, this event happened a long time ago; but it is still one of my most important experiences with language and literacy.  

WLLN 

My parents both worked when I was a child, and many times they would be too busy to take care of me as well. I was often babysat by my grandparents because of this. The only issue is that they spoke only polish and at the time, very broken English. I was not even old enough to be in school yet, so I happened to be learning polish and English at the same time, but much more so polish. My uncle would teach me about an hour everyday of new polish and English words, with about 45 minutes on polish words and the remaining 15 on English. This would not necessarily be a problem, if I lived in Poland. Unfortunately, I was about to go to an English-speaking kindergarten. When my mom would pick me up from my grandparents’ house, she would try to teach me English, but I would find it much more difficult to learn. I was so used to learning polish so that is I got comfortable speaking, and in a way, it is what I preferred to speak. My mother obviously wasn’t happy about this, and she made it known. She would visibly be stressed whenever the subject was brought up, which was quite often considering Kindergarten started soon. Being as young as I was, I didn’t have a large understanding of the situation. I knew that I was less fluent in the language my parents wanted me to know, but I was not exactly sure what the situation was. I did not know that my school life would be more difficult because of what I spoke, I never even thought of it. However, as my mother’s constant attempts to fix my speaking progressed, I figured something was wrong. 

There are a few things that are important to know about my kindergarten, the first is that the way it worked was not like that of a traditional Kindergarten. This is because it started one or two or even a few years early depending on when the parents would want to send them. This meant that many of the kids were still getting the hang of speaking words, and many were for the most part illiterate. That’s not to say they couldn’t read, but their reading vocabulary and vocabulary in general was limited. Therefore, I was still in the process of learning two languages instead of knowing a solid amount of one. What added to this was the fact that my parents were always working, so instead of driving half an hour to my grandmother’s house, they sent me to kindergarten early. When my mom signed me up for kindergarten, she was aware I spoke less English than most American kids my age, but she was confident. Unfortunately, she would find out teaching a kid how to speak and read English when that kid is fluent in another language; is not easy. 

I’m a very visual learner, but I didn’t know that yet. Neither did my mother. Her method of teaching was simple but effective, to some people, not me. Since I knew a good amount of polish at that point, it seemed pretty simple; take polish words and translate them into English. However, the way she got the polish words were by asking my grandmother. Not by having my grandmother write them down, but by saying them and my mother writing them down. I think this goes for all languages but writing down a language you have no experience with by hearing it only, is sure to lead to a few typos. Especially when that language consists of Z’s, D’s, Y’s and occasionally a few vowels. I would say my mother’s attempts to help me get better at English were unsuccessful, but that would be a bit of an understatement. The concept of showing me a misspelled polish word on a card, then flipping it over to show the English word made for more confusion on my part than actually clearing anything up. Aw no! My mom had visible fear as she heard my answers and started to flip through the cards more and more frantically, and I continued to not be able to pronounce a single word. I remember the cards flipping, ‘shoe’ I said ‘shut’ (but pronounced it shoot), ‘dolphin’ I said ‘delfen’, and so on. My mom’s clear concern also put a bit of pressure on me to get it right. Unfortunately, the pressure ended up making me get even more things incorrect, even the simplest words. I remember my mother showing me a card that said ‘bee’. I could do it this time, I knew I could. I looked at the card and studied it, I took all the time I needed and then said with all the confidence I had, ‘dolphin’. It seemed hopeless, but it didn’t make much difference. My first day of school was in three days, my mother continued to practice with me for those three days, and then hoped for the best. 

My elementary school 

On the first day of class, everyone was in a circle with the teacher. The teacher introduced herself first, naturally, and then she said everyone would go in a circle and say their name and favorite food. I didn’t remember any of the names or favorite foods, because I had no idea what any of my peers were saying, much less so because they were speaking English, but because I was absolutely petrified. I barely made out what my own teacher said, I was completely clueless about how to respond. Going through the circle, I can’t remember hearing anything but muffles. It can be argued that this is because it was such a long time ago, but for specific events, I have an amazing memory no matter how long ago it happened. This was one of those events. Once it was my turn, I looked up at the ceiling and didn’t say anything. After a few seconds I looked down at the ground, I was too embarrassed to look at anyone. I was capable of answering the question, but not well enough to answer in front of kids I was going to be in the same class as. After speaking to me, or at least as much as she could, my teacher began to understand the situation I was in. The students, being in kindergarten, did not. I don’t remember a lot about kindergarten, but I do remember events like this one, as well as remembering how mean kids could be. I was too scared to speak to a lot of kids, and when I did, they would ask things like ‘why do you sound weird’. While kids don’t have the most elaborate insults, there’s something about how unfiltered they are that doesn’t make me feel right even looking back at them now. However, it was good motivation to improve my English. Motivation was exactly what I needed, and with determination to try harder; learning became easier. 

My mom had a few books that she got to teach me. They were books that were designed to learn English, and mainly just consisted of showing a picture of something with the word for it under the picture. It was simple but effective enough. In school, my teacher went out of her way to help me, including getting me a children’s dictionary. When I was in school, I carried it around like a bible. I would constantly look at it and use it to plan what I was going to say, it without a doubt changed my life and had a huge impact on how I learned. I collected all the books I had and used them as best I could. I was now more determined than ever and it showed. I would study more and more every night. Book after book, I would go back and forth and read as much as I could. Because of reading all these books and working as hard as I could to learn English, I was soon speaking it almost as well as everyone else. The time I spent during these moments made me realize a larger picture of the whole situation. If you are from a different country, you have no choice but to instantly assimilate. If you don’t, you can’t even make it through kindergarten. Thankfully this was not the case for me, and by the Time Kindergarten was over, I was semi fluent in English, which I don’t think would have been possible without the literacy I was given. 

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