Given that I taught freshmen writing seminars for four years, I was especially interested in work from my own freshman writing class. I readied myself to cringe and squirm and opened up a file called "Essay 1." I don't remember writing this and I don't know what the prompt was, but the paper's not too terrible. It reeks of narcissism, but it's kinda interesting, so I thought I'd share it. WARNING TO STUDENTS INTENDING TO PLAGIARIZE THIS PAPER: do so at your own risk. I'm sure you can find something better out there that fits your prof's "personal experience" prompt. And I hope you get caught. Anyway, here's the essay:
I would say that
I’m a fairly lucky person. Language and
communication were never a problem for me when I was a child. I spoke only English fluently and had no need
to speak anything else. My reading and
writing skills were above average, and although not outstanding, they were
sufficient in getting me through a challenging grade school language arts
program. However, I was not at all
unaware, as one may think, of the many different types of languages and forms
of communication that exist. There are
probably many English-speaking, American children who may not know that not
everyone they encounter in life will be able to communicate with them
adequately, if at all. Because of the
uniqueness of the community in which I was educated, I was always conscious of
the fact that there were people who couldn’t speak English like I could and
even people who couldn’t speak at all.
Having such knowledge, I believe I had an advantage over those other
children. And because of my experiences
with language growing up, I believe that it is sensible and worthwhile to
introduce young children to the various forms of language and
communication. They will grow up with a
greater understanding of and respect for these different language systems and
consequently will be unlikely to develop certain prejudices that often result
from ignorance.
So much of what I
learned about languages was due to classroom experiences. My elementary school where I attended for
seven years had a special program for orthopedically handicapped (OH) children. Many of these children had several
disabilities in addition to wheelchair confinement, disabilities that forced
them to use alternative forms of communication.
I can remember Jennifer, an OH student who was blind, reading a story to
my second grade class. It was my first
introduction to the language of Braille, and after the story, as I ran my
fingers over the tiny bumps on the pages she had read, I was fascinated by how
Jennifer was able to interpret those raised spots into words and meanings. I came to understand more forms of
communication from other students in Jennifer’s special education class. One girl I remember well was Amanda. Every morning, the school would have
announcements broadcasted by students to our classrooms over the loudspeaker. Occasionally, we would hear not a familiar
voice of one of our peers, but a computerized voice, and many of us
ever-questioning second-graders wondered what that “robot” was. And so we were introduced to Amanda. Amanda, also wheelchair-bound, could not
speak or move her hands very well. Her
teacher showed us how Amanda would push certain buttons into a special computer
and the computer would speak for her. We
watched and listened in awe as Amanda said “Good afternoon, my name is Amanda”
to us by only using her fingertips. For
the rest of my years at Forest Knolls, I
would come to learn more about these delightfully interesting children- the
deaf, the blind, the mute- and develop an understanding of how they
communicated and a genuine appreciation of my own lingual abilities.
I understood
communication and language disabilities, as did most of my classmates, but I
had peers who did not. One day at
church, when I was about eight years old, Cori, an OH student from my school,
arrived unexpectedly. Cori wore hearing
aids, and in order for her to hear what someone was saying, the speaker had to
be wearing a special vocal transmitter around his or her neck. In addition to this minor inconvenience, Cori
had a speech impediment and was difficult to understand. I was very excited that Cori would be
attending my church, because I had always been the only Forest Knolls child
there. But after only two Sundays, Cori
stopped coming. I asked my mother why
she had left, and my mother’s reply troubled me. She told me that Cori’s family had decided to
find another church, because the children here had teased her. Her family had been trying for quite a while
to find a church that Cori would feel comfortable in. It is from incidents like this one that I say
prejudice can result from ignorance, and teaching young children about language
and communication could prevent such unnecessary occurrences. Even
as a younger child, I was aware that many other languages existed, although I
could not speak them. From church,
school, and home I had learned phrases in Spanish, French, German, Chinese, and
Swahili. I had met children my age who
could hardly speak English, and I understood why I could not carry on a
conversation with them. In first grade
there was a little boy named Hugo, who spoke almost no English. I knew that Hugo spoke Spanish and could not
understand me, but many of my classmates could not see why Hugo didn’t seem to
listen to them. They were not aware of
other languages outside of English.
Consequently, they thought Hugo was “dumb” and “weird”. Such stereotypes that children develop at a
very young age may be carried on into adolescence if no one takes the time to
teach the child about what they do not know.
In the case of Hugo, however, I am sure that my classmates learned in
due time about what Spanish was, because in the following years, our school had
the brilliant idea to have a Hispanic student translate the daily morning
announcements into Spanish, and after a while, I’m sure the children who had
disliked Hugo learned that speaking Spanish was not a bad thing, just as
reading Braille, using sign language, and using computers to talk were not bad
things.
Indeed, I was a
fortunate child. I had learned about so
many different ways of speaking, and I appreciated each of them, even though I
could not use them. It is, of course,
not true that all children who did not share experiences similar to mine
developed discriminations against different people. I am not trying to make that
generalization. I am simply saying that
it’s a good idea for a child to know that English (or whatever his native
language may be) is not the only language.
A child should not be confined to a little world with only one language
and communication system, because not only could the child possibly form
misconceptions about what he does not know, but he will also be missing out on
a remarkable learning opportunity.
