Writing in our main discourse

Writing in our main discourse

    Throughout this last weeks in English 214 class I have learned an important thing that has made me see the United States in a different way. Why don’t we write in our own discourse, our main language in order to feel better as students? It has made me understand that we can write in our own language but it is not what America wants for us, they want everyone to write and speak in English because it is the main language that makes everyone “successful”.

    Ms. Field has made me understand that the way the United States is set up, it shows that they expect you to go along with everything that they want you to do. But what if we get to write in our own discourse? The most probable thing is that the teacher would not even read our paper and give us an F grade. But why would they give us an F grade if we wrote something in a language that we feel more comfortable to talk? Mainly because all teachers expect you to write in English because it’s the language that supposedly will get you to succeed throughout life. Throughout all our school years, we have been taught by all the teachers how to write. And we went along with it because we knew that if we wrote how the teachers wanted us to write we would get a perfect grade. The only classes that allowed us to write in our own dialect was when we took Spanish classes. When I took it during high school year it made me understand that it was like a normal English class but only that it was more in our own language. Still, in that class the teacher wanted us to write strong analytical essays just like we learned all years while taking English class. As a way I felt comfortable in the Spanish classes that I took, not only because I was able to speak my own language, but because everything I did in English classes was useful for this class and it helped me write critical and analytical essays.

    Moreover, a thing that made me feel more comfortable about the English 214 class was when we had to agree or disagree with the SRTOL facts. This made me see that all my peers had their respective opinions about speaking in our own discourse. This activity made everyone give an opinion of what they thought about this country and why we can’t be able to write in our own language. The thing that surprised me the most was seeing Ms. Field gave out her own opinion, how she wanted to change the way this country is set up and how she wanted to push us to be better students and be able to show our full learning potential.

    I think we should be able to write in our own discourse. There are a majority of people in Latin American countries that became successful just for speaking in Spanish. As well, if we speak two languages we can still manage to be successful because we are writing in the language that everyone expects from us but as well we are communicating with others with the language that we feel more comfortable. I consider that everything Ms. Field has taught me has been like I have been thrown a cold bucket of water at my face. I see that we can speak the language that we want, but more importantly we can show this country that we can still be successful even if we don’t speak English and if we come from another country.