Growing up in New Zealand, English became my third but most used language. I speak it at school and at home. Although I can communicate, I still often make mistakes. I have never experienced labeling or judging because of my English abilities or that I am Chinese. However, one incident influenced me when I was thirteen, in ways that I felt embarrassed and self conscious, but also taught me learning and friendship from others perceptions of me.
When embarrassment comes upon us, it is hard to shrug off or forget. I was highly embarrassed when my friends noticed that I pronounce `yeast' as `east' during our yeast study in science. I was thirteen, and my face went tomato red every time I had to say `yeast.' Redder, when people laughed. Though my friends did not deliberately make fun of me or remind me, I could not over come the feeling of humiliation. I thought they were looking down on me because of my poor English, or maybe because I am Chinese. However, they did not make me feel this way, all the time, I was over flooded by the feeling of embarrassment that made me felt awful but also more aware of myself.
As I become more aware of whom I am, I felt very self-conscious about being Chinese-New Zealander and made me confused. The `yeast' incident caused me more aware the way I speak and how people might think of me. To overcome this feeling, I actually avoided using the word `yeast'. Because I thought my English was bad, I also came to conclusion that people will start seeing me differently. Then, I also blamed that I am Chinese and I am different to my European friends. To not feel self-conscious I often avoided things or made up excuses. But I could not stop feeling aware of myself; this later led me to finding more Asian friends. It helped me to feel more common and secure yet with a diversity of friends, I have also learned from everyone.
As I move from feeling embarrassed, insecure, I was also learning at the same time. What I learned was not how to say `yeast', because I properly still say it as `east.' I learned that there are some things that I may not be good at but I can never let little things put me off. To learn something, I have to move on from mistakes and feelings.
With her mother, she uses “broken” English. With her colleagues, she uses correct English grammar. Similarly, Wong also grew up in America with a traditional Chinese mother. In contrast, Wong’s upbringing involves her mother forcing her into attending two different schools. After her American school day, Wong continued on with Chinese school to learn about both cultures.
In the book, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, Everett Ruess was a man who wanted to find his purpose in life by, leaving school, developing a new identity, and expressing himself and his joun in his letters. First, Ruess attended the Otis Art School and Hollywood High. “At the end of the summer, Everett returned home only long enough to earn a high school diploma, which he received in January 1931. Less than a month later he was on the road again..." Ruess started to travel solo at the age of sixteen. He began to hitchhike and trek throughout the U.S. and its national parks. “Except for a short, unhappy stint at UCLA (he dropped out after a single semester, to his father’s lasting dismay),” Ruess dropped out of college and he spent the rest
In conclusion, learning English was a challenge when it was first introduced to me, but now I have overcome that challenge. I am able to defend myself in the outside public world of English with no shame at all. I now understand how fortunate I am to know another language different from my own. For me, it is important to still have my first language because it is a way to retain the Mexican culture. It is just the way I was raised to believe.
When I first moved to America I did not speak to anyone in my class for an entire year. I was simply too afraid. Although I slowly began to break out of my shell, the process was long and painful. Every time someone bullied me about my accent or ethnicity, I retreated back into my circle and hid away. In order to be who I am today I had to spend a lot of time self-motivating myself.Today, I am the person who I am proud to be. I am a strong and confident individual that welcomes challenges. The journey, the hardships, and racism that I went through, throughout my life have shaped me into a strong individual.
When I first came to this country, I wasn’t thinking about the language, how to learn it, use it, write, how I’m going to speak with people who are next to you and you want to talk to them. My first experience was in Veterans School, it was my first year in school here in United States, and I was in eight grades. The first day of school you were suppose to go with your parent, especially if you were new in the school, like me. What happened was that I didn’t bring my dad whit me, a woman was asking me a lot of questions and I was completely loss, I didn’t have any idea of what she was telling me and I was scare. One funny thing, I started cry because I fell like frustrate, I didn’t know no one from there. Someone seat next to me, and ask me in Spanish what was wrong and I just say in my mind thanks God for send me this person, then I answered her that I didn’t know Engl...
The majority of people have a subject they were never good at. Unless your a genius or have a photographic memory, kudos to you. But the rest of us have to work twice as hard to achieve a passing grade to at least pass the class. Some of us have been told, horrible things that discourages us and we just give up. Verbal words, that have a huge negative impact on us. Now, this paper isn’t to make you feel sorry about yourself, this paper is to reflect on your ups and downs on the subject you had the most trouble at. I know its scary admitting your faults but how can you move one from your faults if you don’t admit them? But while admitting your faults you also have your strengths, even if it was determination to keep going, that is something you should be proud of, because you never gave up.
The first and second year after moving from China to the United States, I was afraid to talk to strangers because my English was not very well. I had to depend on my husband for dealing with my personal business, such as making a doctor’s appointment, calling to the bank, or questioning to DMV officers. Douglass says, “being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart” (62). For myself, being a dependent and helpless adult is a shame. Moreover, I lacked of extra money to go to school to improve my English. Thus, I stayed home all the time to avoid embarrassment of talking to strangers. After a while, I realized that improving English speaking skills are the essential to gain my self-confidence. So, I spent time to read various articles on the internet and watched English dialogues’ videos on YouTube. As a non-English speaking immigrant living in the U.S., I inevitably encountered a series of difficulties to integrate myself into a new
In her work, “Identity,” Carla Kaplan frames the difficulty of defining the term “identity.” She argues that identity is a tension because personal identity conventionally arbitrates taste and lifestyle, while social identity is regarded as a constellation of different and often competing identifications or “cultural negotiations” (Kaplan, 2007). In addition, she argues that identity politics has caused “suspicion and criticism” by limiting new democratic possibilities by encouraging narrow solidarities rather than broader identification resulting in the struggle for recognition becoming a questioning of recognition (Kaplan, 2007). Lastly, she argues that “A realistic identity politics” is needed to recognize that identities are multiple/dynamic
The quest to find one’s identity and have a sense of individuality is rampant in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. The humanistic urge to have purpose is embodied in the characters of Kathy, Tommy and Ruth very differently. They each know that their life’s purpose is to donate until “completion,” yet on the way there they explore themselves and find out there is more to each of them than their vital organs, even if that is how society has labeled them.
Identity is a state of mind in which someone recognizes/identifies their character traits that leads to finding out who they are and what they do and not that of someone else. In other words it's basically who you are and what you define yourself as being. The theme of identity is often expressed in books/novels or basically any other piece of literature so that the reader can intrigue themselves and relate to the characters and their emotions. It's useful in helping readers understand that a person's state of mind is full of arduous thoughts about who they are and what they want to be. People can try to modify their identity as much as they want but that can never change. The theme of identity is a very strenuous topic to understand but yet very interesting if understood. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez and Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki are two remarkable books that depict the identity theme. They both have to deal with people that have an identity that they've tried to alter in order to become more at ease in the society they belong to. The families in these books are from a certain country from which they're forced to immigrate into the United States due to certain circumstances. This causes young people in the family trauma and they must try to sometimes change in order to maintain a comfortable life. Both authors: Alvarez and Houston have written their novels Is such an exemplifying matter that identity can be clearly depicted within characters as a way in adjusting to their new lives.
There are millions of words across the globe that are used to describe people and uncover their identity, but what is identity? How can you begin to describe something that varies so greatly from one human being to another? Can you create a universal meaning for a word describing human concepts that people often fail to define for themselves? Of course there isn't one definition to define such a word. It is an intricate aspect of human nature, and it has a definition just as complex.
I have taught myself several things in life, but one of them sticks out more than all the others, and that’s the lessons I have taught myself during my experiences with my first two jobs. These learning experiences I have had have helped me to mature and grow into an adult, and they have changed my life for the better.
I did not meet many people in the morning, so I did not notice any difference. My first class of the day was an English class, and after I walked into the classroom, my Chinese friends looked at me surprised. The first thing they asked was “are we having our presentation today?” I replied them that I dressed up for the activity in another class. I also told them about this gender communication class, but they have no interest to take it. They said because my normal clothing is really casual and I am always cold, they have never seen me wear dresses. Even if I don’t wear dress so often, they wouldn’t think I am not a
Wisdom comes with experience, engorging oneself in many opportunities comes with its mistakes. If one can comes out of a bad experience with some sort of knowledge that will help them, or teach them anything, it was not something to be ashamed of.
For at least fifteen years of my life, I kept my emotions bottled up, my secrets under lock and key. Not once did I even question if I could talk about my life to anybody, I couldn’t. Instead of learning to talk about my life, to talk about my feelings, to talk about my troubles and my hardships and my state of being… I learned to be ashamed. I learned wrong.