Importance and Powev of English Speaking Free Essay Example

Language has a power to show who people are by the way one’s write and speak, why people in the world should hide that power when it can be expose to other cultures and share it with everybody else. I have noticed America has diversities of people from different parts of the world, and it is helpless not to notice that everybody is different, I walk on the streets and I have noticed people from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latinos and many others parts of the world that they are from those countries because of how they talk.

Other people everywhere noticed these people are from these countries by how they talk and sometimes how they dress too. In this essay I will be convincing you on why colleges/universities and even workplaces should not insist that written academic work must be completed in standard American English. Language plays a large part in a person’s life since it is a way of expressing where people are from.

All these ideas of language are the reasons why schools/colleges should let the students write papers in their own way so that the differences can be shared and understood by others in America.

Language expresses part of our identity. As language is way of communication, we can get a pretty clear idea of a one’s identity when we speak with one another. If listening to two person talking in English, by their accent whether they are from any part of the world.

Baldwin in his article ‘If black English isn’t a language, then tell me, what is?’, writes the following sentences, “The argument has nothing to do with language itself but with the role of language. Language, incontestably, reveals the speaker. Language, also, far more dubiously, is meant to define the other”. Baldwin means that between ‘language itself’ and ‘The role of language’ that language itself is a basic means of communication and the role of language is the way groups of people use language as a weapon of power over other groups of people.

Since words are so often used, people have learned to treat them lightly. By becoming more aware of the impact and power of language, people can make more beneficial choices about how everyone express themselves and how we interpret others. Baldwin also writes in his article ‘If black English isn’t a language, then tell me, what is?’, ‘It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power.” Baldwin means that English can either bind people together or separate them. People can be discriminators to others way of speaking, especially when one’s language reveals where they come from. I consider Language has a power, and that power can be used for the greater good or can also be abused and cause discrimination.

In the past, people who moved to the United States were discriminated against because they didn’t understand or speak English. When these people had children, they decided they wanted their children to focus on speaking English, to save them from being discriminated. Our culture also claims that if you don’t speak the native language, then you’re not Latino or black enough. If you don’t know the slang of your country, you can’t refer to yourself as Latino or black, In my opinion I consider that this creates an confusion in our identity, others and myself have experience this same struggle having to learn English and in order to become American we have to leave our native language and speak English only. Anzaldua writes in ‘how to tame a wild tongue’ in Spanglish in a way we could understand what she wants to communicate, she expressed her anger toward people’s inappropriate behavior to her home language.

Anzaldua was caught for telling the teacher how to say her name correctly, and the teacher was so angry and said the following sentence: “‘If you want to be American, speak ‘American.’ If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong.’”(page 497). Anzaldua described that not only as a child, but also as an adult, she was prevented to use her home language in the United States. When wondering about her identity, she discusses how she will talk depending on who she is talking to. What Chicanos experience is an identity or problem of borders and cultures. However, they will not give up their language, Being forced to stick to another culture’s rules. Even Anzaldua’s mother, speaking Spanish, is upset that her daughter sounds like she is Mexican and doesn’t speak quality English.

Communication is a way in which individuals are able to express and transmit their thoughts and emotions to others. Without the means to communicate, people would be not able to understand each other in the world. Therefore, it is beneficial to communicate with others because it helps us unite with others that are not of our same background. Language allows for exploration to a new world from someone else’s language.

Language means that you are able to communicate in such a way that others understand you. Language becomes more powerful when understood by a bigger group of people than just those closest to you. In Stanley Fish’s article “ What Should College’s Teach? Part 3”, he explains to us what he think is most important to teach in the college classroom. He talks about how students come into college unable to write clean English sentences. Fish blames the students teachers from their middle and high school. He believes that their teachers weren’t doing their job teaching the students to write in the correct English form.

Fish says that “a failure of secondary education from the students previous teachers, relieves college teachers of an responsibility to make up deficit”. College professors are teaching students material that they should’ve learned from their teachers in middle and high school. Fish made an excellent point but I believe that, that’s not the most important thing college classroom’s should teach. I believe that its easy to teach students how to write good sentences, it shouldn’t be the main topic that professors should focus on, The way people were raised by their parents and the things that people learned in your childhood have come together to make a group of people different from other groups of people as Latinos, Americans, Black/Africans and other more. Students should write in the way that makes them different from everybody else.

Language impacts the daily lives of members of any race of the world. Language helps express our feelings and questions around us. Words are used to express emotion. The unique methods people can use to communicate through written and spoken language is a large part of what allows people to form all types of relationships with one another. The importance of communication is often overlooked. It is ignorant to believe that one can travel the world and expect a person to understand his or her native tongue, but learning and understanding each other’s language helps understanding each other’s history, and why we are the way we are.

Maintaining your first language is critical to your identity and contributes to a positive self-concept, Teaching your native language in schools or universities overseas could also be a rewarding and enriching experience. There is a lot of ways a person can learn from someone else’s language and culture, staring from letting universities/college write in Standard American English or letting people talk in their native or home language, it would make people or Americans see that we can learn from each other and since discrimination is still happening in America, it would help as well to talk our own language more often.