A reflection upon my personal development in the literacy of English language
Abstract
The following essay is not a scientific research paper. It is self-reflection and assessment of personal growth and development of the literacy of English language and literature over the period of the English language course.
Effect of 3 Credits of ENG 11000 on the Literacy of the English Language of Sadman Shawraz.
The purpose of this experiment (ENG 11000 Course) is to determine whether or not the subject of the experiment, Sadman Shawraz, improve over the period of the course. I am going to compare my progress in English Language Literacy with an imaginary Sadman Shawraz who did not take this course in Spring 2019. Here, I will be analyzing my progress in English language and determine whether or not I have met the Courses Learning Objectives. In the first part, I will establish a general idea on the structure of the course and on the next part, I will answer the age-old question, was it worth it?
To begin with, this course explores and analyzes variety types of writing and reading genres and rhetorical situations. The course materials provided throughout its four phases, were all diverse in terms of genre and language use. For example, “Alma” by Junot Diaz, was one of the most unique writing introduced in this course. The work is done completely in a second person perspective. This fascinating piece portrayed a new dimension in writing stories. You can say, here the writer was scolding himself, or the writer was scolding someone else, or a very modernized god was describing your behavior as you stood before him in the judgment day. This change in perspective in terms of writing was very intriguing which influenced my writing about a Keychain’s autobiography, “I am a Wooden Keychain”. However, this was a follow up writing based on “Kitchen” by Banana Yoshimoto where the writer talks about “a bell” where, in short, Yoshimoto portrayed how an object can become an unspoken symbol of a relationship between two souls. There are in total of three writers who influenced my writing in that autobiography. The third one was, “My Name Is Red” by Orhan Pamuk, a book containing several autobiographical stories which I have read many years ago. Junot Diaz made me look for a different way to write and made me remember of Orhan Pamuk, who, in return, gave me the idea to write an autobiography, and finally, Banana Yoshimoto asked me to find an object which had a soul. This all happened in the first phase which was like a bombardment of genres, in other words, an introduction to the diversification of writing.
Continuing to Phase Two, the first portion of it was summarizing and analyzing works of different authors through rhetorical situation worksheets and writing summaries. It is compulsory to know how to summarize others’ works so that not only you can better understand those works but also become able to summarize your own ideas to others. Furthermore, understanding who your audience is and how you can capture their attention, can take your work a long way. The skill to summarize other’s ideas was necessary in the following part of the phase, which was to write a researched exploratory essay. Practicing summarization and rhetorical situation, helped me to find the key ideas of the researched papers which I later used to establish my idea on how the language evolves with technology in “Why Do All Lions Sound the Same?”. I feel like you are going to put forth an argument mixed with a question, “why does the title does not reflect my idea, what does lions have to do anything with technology?”. My argument is this, do you know what are the two things we humans have that the lions don’t, they are language and technology. No language, thus all the lions sound the same, and no technology, as a result, their roar sounds did not change over a very long period of time. It makes you wonder, without technology, men could not have traveled throughout the planet and develop different languages. We might have stayed in the same continent and used the same language for countless generations, moreover, since we would not be able to make anything new we might not have needed new words.
Before I begin Phrase 3, I should point out that, I am not going to talk about Phase 4 because, this essay is a work which I am doing in Phase 4, thus, I have to finish writing this to get an insight on the purpose of this Phase and will require another essay to describe it.
Phase 3 is same as the final part of Phase 2, but this time with a more guided framework for the researched paper and I was provided with the necessary source to do the research on.
Finally, I have been able to give you a general idea on what the course had to offer. In my opinion, who ever laid out the plans for this course, at least has a PhD or deserves one as soon as possible.
Now answering that age-old question, did the course help me to improve? Following its structure, it can be said that, the course is designed to help improve the literacy of the English language of those who are taking it. However, there are always those students who find the course easy at the beginning, therefore, take it lightly which can sometimes have consequences. Having confidence is great but being overconfident can be harmful. For example, writing the assignments, the night before submission isn’t a good habit. As the first part of course is easy, following such habit can get you good grades on those assignments but as the course gets more complex, thus, this bad habit can have adverse effects. Unfortunately, I am an example of this. Starting with an A+ in the first assignment and a B+ in the last, shows my lack of punctuation and excess of overconfidence. I will be submitting a revision of the latter one to better my grades, but this does not undermine the fact that I have been careless with my studies. However, the course was successful in improving my writing by introducing me to the diversity of genres. Being a dedicated science student with a Biotechnology major, I have never put any effort in my English writings but this course provided me the opportunity to improve by making the writing part of the language more interesting. I believe, the course teacher had a great role to play as well as the course itself, to give me a more applicable environment where I felt the necessity and found the willingness to improve my own writing. Furthermore, the course provides the significance of dialects and the diversity of the English as a language. In this course, for the first time, I have found myself thinking of conducting a research on the diversity of English dialects, how they change, form and represent the correspondent communities. I also realized that we not only have the right to use the language that we are comfortable in but also preserve the freedom of how to speak that language. I have come to believe that, we should not have stereotypical views on accents, because accents or dialects are a form of a complex language which is unique to the individual and deeply connected to the person’s life.
In conclusion, there is enough evidence that the literacy of English Language of Sadman Shawraz had greatly improved throughout the course. However, due to his overconfidence and lack of punctuality has harmed his grades. Therefore, we suggest, if Sadman Shawraz improves his bad habits and take a more cautious approach in his future English courses, we will be able to get a better improvement in his English language skills.
