Norely Rivas
Professor Garcia
ELL 101
Reflective Essay #1
October 1, 2018
I consider myself as a Dominican American. I was born in New York, NY but I was mostly raised in the Dominican Republic. My first language was spanish. I picked up some english phrases from my older siblings before attending school. I was always made fun of the way I pronounced certain english words in my early years, but in my opinion I think I definitely perfected the English language by the time I finished junior high school.
Ever since I learned how to speak english, I would try and engage my parent to learn english as well. My dad got the hang of it pretty well, he is fluent in english and can even write some things depending the subject. My mom on the other hand is still struggling to speak english. She doesn’t feel as comfortable speaking the different language and feels as if people will probably make fun of her and ignore her. Instead of trying to teach her the basics I thought it would be easier if I were to just speak to her in english, since she understands some things and she’d try to respond in spanish, now we use this method of communication every day. Although both my parents understand the english language enough to carry small conversations, I feel more comfortable talking to them in spanish majority of the time.
Growing up, I was raised in a hispanic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and also was raised in the Dominican Republic. One of the great advantages of being a bilingual child was that I was able to make a friend or two everywhere I went. I was able to pick up on conversations with kids that spoke english or spanish. In school there were only a few selected students who were also bilingual, those were the students I clicked with the most and I still associate with them ‘til this day.
Questions
- Do my personal experiences help support the main idea of my essay enough?
- Should I use literal examples of what the Dominican Spanish language consists of?
I think you should use examples of what Dominican language consists of. Also I think you should examples of a conversation with your mom. Your personal experiences connect well with your essay they showed how they motivated you to learn the English language.
Your personal experience does relate to your essay but maybe if you extend a little more on how language previews a person, you know ? Like using some examples where your language was maybe made fun of ?
Norely, you need to work on your essay a little bit more. Make sure that you check the rubric and the questions (what is the objective of the essay?) – you have not identified and/or explained the language attitudes towards you dialect/language(s). Go back to the readings and make sure that you are able to identify how individuals/speakers perceive your language/dialect (it seems that you are more focus on Spasnih), and describe the factors that contribute to these attitudes.