Let’s talk about an essay, learning a new lifestyle can be hard, especially when it includes learning a new language. In the essay Aria: The memory of a bilingual child hood by Richard Rodriguez he talks about himself who at the time only knew one language, Spanish, he started school and was required to memorize English and create a reborn childhood because of it. I believe that the author was trying to explain how something as small as learning a new language in a new environment and move to a new country can be both challenging and life changing, for good and bad. This essay wasn’t all that well written, some points were confusing and the thesis was not clear. Coming from an English 101 student, I didn’t find this essay to be very useful, …show more content…
Learning a new language isn’t always as scary as it seems. The result of knowing how to speak in a different country can be very helpful. Not only do people have good experiences with learning being a part of their childhood, but later in life it opens up a world of opportunities. Seeking jobs can be difficult at times, but knowing more than one language can put you closer to succeeding at getting that position that some of the other candidates. I am not saying that always is the case, but if one can talk to customers that speak another language it is always helpful to the company. I believe that Richard felt more uncomfortable learning a new language because the more he advanced, his parents weren’t as much on his level as he would have liked. His parents wanted what was best for him, I think he should have considered his future in the country he was going to end up in and maybe then he wouldn’t have considered his childhood …show more content…
I would say if Richard and his parents learned English together, yet still spoke Spanish together his outlook would have been a little different. I think that since his family learned English more slowly than him, he felt that they weren’t the same anymore. His parents wanted to speak English around him more than his first language so it made him feel out of place, he didn’t have anyone to speak Spanish to like in his early childhood years. Richards story, it not everyone’s story. If he stated two sides of the story instead of assuming everyone was the same than his story would have had a better outcome, in my opinion. The intended audience might find this essay engaging and interesting, but as mentioned before it depends on how their childhood was compared to the authors’. Not everyone in the audience is going to relate to his story, but that is the case for most stories. The tone of this essay could come across as negative, but for him in was honest and down to the point. I believe that him being bilingual will eventually help him realize that it didn’t all around ruin his whole
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
Throughout Richards early childhood development he quickly understood that in order to succeed in America he would have to learn to confidently speak in English. Richard is Hispanic American and although he was born in America, Spanish was the only language that he was exposed to as a young child. He grew up in a home where Spanish flowed freely, but he soon realized outside of his home the language that he primarily knew was foreign. His parents spoke fluent Spanish along with all of his relatives. The brief encounters he experienced of his parents speaking English were only in public places and the proficiency was very poor. Rodriguez’s home was as a safety net for him and his Spanish speaking family with they are his only real connections to the outside world. It wasn’t until Richards encounter with his teachers that he and his family was heavily impressed on the importance of developing a public language. After the encouragement of the visit home from a teacher as a family
One of his main points and I believe to be one of the central reasons behind him writing the book, is to state his harsh yet rightful opinion on bilingualists. Rodriguez states, "The bilingualists insist that a student should be reminded of his difference from others in mass society, his heritage. But they equate mere separateness with individuality" (27). Because he has personally been through that situation, he wants people to understand and support his opinion and possibly persuade them to have a certain opinion on bilingualists.
Richard Rodriguez offers an alternate yet equally profound truth: While our heritage and culture may remain forever tied to and expressed in our native or "home" language, only through the dominant language of our country (English in most cases) can we achieve a place in society that gives us a feeling that we belong amongst everyone else. The only way we can truly become a part of our community and fit in is to dominate the current spoken language. In the United States, the dominant language is Standard English. In this excerpt from "Aria," a chapter in his autobiography entitled "Hunger of Memory": The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Rodriguez discusses public and private languages, and agrees that his achievements in English separated him from his Spanish family and culture but also brought him "the belief, the calming assurance that [he] belonged in public." We as human beings want to feel we belong. We search for that place in society where we are most comfortable all our lives. One should consider the benefits of mastering the dominant language of the society they live in, but should also take into account the harm of taking your native language for granted. I will attempt to explore both of these considerations and examine Rodriguez place in life now, by stating the facts of who is now by the childhood decisions that were made.
Bilingual education offers a completely different world for students of different ethnic background and thus creates a comfort zone limiting the risk-taking factor necessary for the maturation of a child to an adult. Rodriguez argues supporters of bilingualism fail to realize "while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality" (Rodriguez 26). He explains that the imperative "radical self-reformation" required by education is lost by offering bilingual education and such a program suggests a place where the need for a sense of public identity disappears. A bilingual program gives a student the opportunity to be separated from real life and institutes a life that leaves out an essential understanding of the world. Bilingual students do not know the complexities of their world, including emotion, ethics, and logic, because the bilingual program secludes the eager minds to a much simpler, more naïve idea of how the society works, leaving out the confidence of belonging in public. This situation not only limits the education experience for non-English speaking students, but also hinders the further education of English speaking students by erecting a communicat...
So that was the case for Richard Rodriguez in “Aria”, he expands on his life as a kid learning to speak English. And his parents not knowing how to speak English fluently. He would not like going to school because when he would try to speak English he would get made fun of. English was never comfortable to him. But that all changed when the nuns from his school came to his house to tell his parents to speak more English at home. He felt broken, there was no talking in Spanish in the house just English. From there he started to learn more English at school and became fluent in it. He even forgot how to pronounce things in Spanish after that. Richard Rodriguez said, “I would speak, or try to speak, Spanish, and I would manage to utter halting, hiccupping sounds that betrayed my unease” (Richard 319). He felt disappointed in himself for not being able to speak Spanish. This is a showing of how language has power. Just because he stopped speaking a language, he forgot it and became more fluent in another
Teachers, parents, and students alike can relate to the desire to "excercise[s] the mind and enrich[es] the spirit" of our students (Guillen 1). What parent wouldn't want their student's "mind" and "spirit" enriched? Guillen overwhelms his reader with positive slogans as to what learning a foreign language has the potential to do for students, long-term. He goes on to say that "you'd better speak the language of the home country or you will be at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding the subtleties of decision-making and advancing your career" (Guillen 1). We are made to feel as though by taking away a foreign language program from a school, that we would be depriving students of a successful future and would hold them back from "advancing in your career"(Guillen 1). That would be just plain wrong; that is what he wants us to feel, and more importantly, to come down on his side of the
A different language is a different vision of life. In Sista Tongue Lisa Kanae discusses the social history of creole languages, specifically “Pidgin”. She intertwines a personal story about her younger brother Harold, who was a later talker and stigmatized for not speaking Standard English. Within Sista Tongue is the excerpt “Some Light on the Problem of Bilingualism As Found from a Study of the Progress in Mastery of English Among Preschool Children of Non-American Ancestry in Hawaii” written by Madorah E. Smith in 1939. Smith claimed children of Non-American ancestry in Hawaii are “retarded” in language development. According to Smith, none of the racial groups studied attained the use of sentences at the age of six years old compared to Caucasian children. Kanae utilizes Smith’s excerpt to connect the social history of creole languages and Harold’s story. Although the excerpt clashes with Kanae’s argument of unfair stereotypes forced upon “Pidgin” speakers, she challenges Smith’s research and proves her claims are ignorant assumptions.
In the beginning of the article, Richard started out by mentioning how his public language which is Spanish will not get him nowhere in life, however by learning a public language which is English will help more in life and make stuff way easier for him. He mentioned being scared and hard for him to learn a public society language. When I came to America 11 years ago, it was hard for me to learn a second language and I doubted myself all the time, however I had family members, teachers and friends pushing me to learn and telling me to not give up even
As we get further into the passage Kohl has put forth different ideas that attract the audience. Considering my own experiences and cultural beliefs I find that Kohl's argument really justified the fact that being able to stay morally intact to your culture is an obstacle and just because a specific person does not want to learn or adapt to a new part of society does not mean that it will result in failure. Personally, I agree with Kohl's explanation to the situation behind language. Being able to open up to something new such as a language really takes a lot of skill and drive to do after being so intertwined in your original culture such as Wilfredo was with Spanish. I also agree with Kohl that people mistakenly think others who are not willing to learn something new are just sprung over the fact that they might fail when that is not necessarily the case. I find it useful that Kohl related Wilfredo's choice with not wanting to learn Spanish with personal experience of growing up in a partially bilingual family. I concur that being able to alter your lifestyle in order to learn something else is very challenging with the thought that you may lose a significant part of your
For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author describes the social, cultural and linguistic difficulties encountered in America as he attempts to assimilate to the American culture. Richard Rodriguez by committing himself to speaking English, he lost his cultural ties, family background and ethnic heritage.
Richard Rodriguez commences, “ Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” recounting the memory of his first day of school. A memory that will help support against the use of “family language” as the child 's primary language at school. Rodriguez is forced to say no: it 's not possible for children to use the family language at school. To support against the “family language” used at school, Rodriguez uses simple and complex sentences to help achieve the readers to understand that to only accept the family language is to be closed off by society; to not have a “public life” is to not share one 's life experiences with society. Bilingual Educators state that you would “lose a degree of ‘individuality’ if one assimilates. Rodriguez refutes this statement through his expressive use of diction and narration educing emotion from his audience building his pathos. Rodriguez also develops ethos due to the experiences he went
Learning English, Richard lost his connection to his family, and his heritage by losing how to speak Spanish, the language of his family, by learning English. He writes “My mother! My father! After English became my primary language, I no longer knew what words to use in addressing my parents. The old Spanish words (those tender accents of sound) I had earlier used - mamá and papá - I couldn 't use any more” (32). I do believe, learning English, in a bad form of bilingual education will make you lose the sense with you other language, too. I know that because that happened to me. I was born in Kenya even though I was Somalian, I knew Swahili, when I came here, and within 5 years I forgot everything I knew, in those same five years I was becoming more fluent in English. In a proper setting, though that wouldn’t have happened, because evidence has shown that it suppose to make you more fluent in your own language as that 's how you would transition into
The subject is a six years old girl named Nayali. She lives in a small apartment with her mother and aunt. Nayali was born in Cuba and she just move to United States 3 month ago to live with her mother and aunt. Nayali seem to be in discomfort with the changes experienced. She is a Spanish speaking and the first thing that seems to bother her is the new language. The client has obvious emotional changes because she does not understand the new customs. Subject rapidly changes from happiness to anger. She complains constantly to her mother why she is living so far from her friends and loved ones. In her past life she used to play along with her friends. Since she moved here she has to make new friends to play. She has a strong character and
From my experience, bilingual education was a disadvantage during my childhood. At the age of twelve, I was introduced into a bilingual classroom for the first time. The crowded classroom was a combination of seventh and eighth grade Spanish-speaking students, who ranged from the ages of twelve to fifteen. The idea of bilingual education was to help students who weren’t fluent in the English language. The main focus of bilingual education was to teach English and, at the same time, teach a very basic knowledge of the core curriculum subjects: Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. Unfortunately, bilingual education had academic, psychological, and social disadvantages for me.