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Assimilation and multiculturalism
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Multiculturalism in Mother Tongue, Memorial Day and Multiculturalism, and College Writing
As an American it is very important to understand the different concepts of assimilation and multiculturalism. It is these terms that differ one person from everybody else in some kind of way. Multiculturalism is a term that is just what it sounds like. It is including several cultures. According to the American Heritage dictionary, multiculturalism is " a social or educational theory or program that encourages interest in many cultures within a society rather than in only one mainstream culture. " Assimilation is the exact opposite of what multiculturalism is. Assimilation is described to be where " a minority group gradually adopts the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture. "
So how does one decide whether to believe in assimilation or multiculturalism? Well the truth to that question is that there really is no direct correct belief. It all depends on the person. On how their past was like, who their parents are and where they came from. Some of the greater issues that come up when talking about assimilation versus multiculturalism are language, literacy, power, and difference in American culture. Amy Tan's reading titled " Mother Tongue ", Thomas Bray's " Memorial Day and multiculturalism ", and Maxine Hairston's " College Writing " readings are amongst one of the most appropriate in addressing the issues of multiculturalism and assimilation. One of the greatest differences in American culture right now is language. This is because people come from all sorts of different countries into America and only know how to speak their own native language. Many people come over to America to work here...
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...most people in American have come together to form a part of assimilation; however not to it's fullest. Although people are proud to keep their American culture and initiate with it as much as possible, I feel that people must not forget their own personal heritage from where they were born. The Idea of assimilation for me is just as important as multiculturalism. I will be just as proud to learn and follow in the English language, as I will be to remember all that I have been taught about my Russian culture.
Works Cited:
Bray Thomas. " Memorial Day and Multiculturalism, " Detroit News 24 May 1998
Tan Amy. " Mother Tongue. " Border text: cultural reading for contemporary writers Ed. Randal Bass. Boston: Houghton- Mifflin, 1999
Hairston Maxine. " College Writing ." College Composition and Communication 43.2. University of Texas, 1992
Thermodynamics is essentially how heat energy transfers from one substance to another. In “Joe Science vs. the Water Heater,” the temperature of water in a water heater must be found without measuring the water directly from the water heater. This problem was translated to the lab by providing heated water, fish bowl thermometers, styrofoam cups, and all other instruments found in the lab. The thermometer only reaches 45 degrees celsius; therefore, thermodynamic equations need to be applied in order to find the original temperature of the hot water. We also had access to deionized water that was approximately room temperature.
Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue." 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. 4th Edition. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 417-23. Print.
Assimilation is when you take new information or experiences and include them into your existing perceptions and understandings. This means that when you have new information you make sense of it from the information you already had. Accommodation is when you take new information and alter or even change the existing information you had. For example, say you have a friend who you have always known to be super nice to everyone, and one day you see her yelling and being mean to someone in the hallway. If you were to use the assimilation process, you could forgive the girls behavior, believing she might of just had a bad day. If you were to use accommodation, you might change your opinion on the girl and think maybe she isn't as nice as you thought she
Many people in America want to assimilate to the U.S. because they think that being American is a better option. People such as the Italians in the 1870s tried to assimilate in order to become an American to not become an enemy in the U.S. Also, the Mexicans today are constantly coming to the U.S. to have a better life because they know being American is the best solution for their problems at home. What assimilation mean is when a person leaves one’s own culture to join a different culture the person wants to be. For the purpose of this essay, an American is a person who has commitment to succeed in what one wants, able to speak english, to love the pop culture in the U.S. at the time one is living such as the hit songs, games, T.V. shows, etc. but not to other cultures, and be a citizen in America. People throughout history must assimilate to become a true American
Despite growing up amidst a language deemed as “broken” and “fractured”, Amy Tan’s love for language allowed her to embrace the variations of English that surrounded her. In her short essay “Mother Tongue”, Tan discusses the internal conflict she had with the English learned from her mother to that of the English in her education. Sharing her experiences as an adolescent posing to be her mother for respect, Tan develops a frustration at the difficulty of not being taken seriously due to one’s inability to speak the way society expects. Disallowing others to prove their misconceptions of her, Tan exerted herself in excelling at English throughout school. She felt a need to rebel against the proverbial view that writing is not a strong suit of someone who grew up learning English in an immigrant family. Attempting to prove her mastery of the English language, Tan discovered her writing did not show who she truly was. She was an Asian-American, not just Asian, not just American, but that she belonged in both demographics. Disregarding the idea that her mother’s English could be something of a social deficit, a learning limitation, Tan expanded and cultivated her writing style to incorporate both the language she learned in school, as well as the variation of it spoken by her mother. Tan learned that in order to satisfy herself, she needed to acknowledge both of her “Englishes” (Tan 128).
Back to the American history, "assimilation" policy was introduced to the Native Americans during the earliest colonial times. During that time, all American Indians must either adopt the White's lifestyles or perish. With the declaration of the Dawes Act, a goal of destroying all tribal structure and their communal life were summoned. Tribal lands were divided among natives and the Westerners, leaving the natives, a land surrounded by the foreigners. With such acts, the American Indians were slowly assimilated into the White's culture and without their own people around them, they will have to communicate with the Westerners with their language instead of their indigenous languages; they ...
The Essay written by Amy Tan titled 'Mother Tongue' concludes with her saying, 'I knew I had succeeded where I counted when my mother finished my book and gave her understandable verdict' (39). The essay focuses on the prejudices of Amy and her mother. All her life, Amy's mother has been looked down upon due to the fact that she did not speak proper English. Amy defends her mother's 'Broken' English by the fact that she is Chinese and that the 'Simple' English spoken in her family 'Has become a language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk' (36). Little did she know that she was actually speaking more than one type of English. Amy Tan was successful in providing resourceful information in every aspect. This gave the reader a full understanding of the disadvantages Amy and her mother had with reading and writing. The Essay 'Mother Tongue' truly represents Amy Tan's love and passion for her mother as well as her writing. Finally getting the respect of her critics and lucratively connecting with the reaction her mother had to her book, 'So easy to read' (39). Was writing a book the best way to bond with your own mother? Is it a struggle to always have the urge to fit in? Was it healthy for her to take care of family situations all her life because her mother is unable to speak clear English?
Volcanoes are one of natures most interesting and dangerous phenomenons. The way volcanoes operate can be understood, on a basic level, by just some simple physics and chemistry, this paper will investigate and explain some of the basic physics that govern the behavior of volcanoes.
One of the most important concepts that I have learned from class is Assimilation Theory. This theory is based on the adaptation that a certain ethnic group goes through in order to fit in and survive in the new dominant society. For example, according to the book the United States in known to be a predominantly white cultural society, therefore many ethnic groups from all over who choose to come to the U.S often have to assimilate and adapt to the social and cultural norms. Assimilation theory affects many ethnic groups in sense that it can change the way they behave and live in a society. Whenever another ethnic group immigrates to a place where there is a dominant ethnic group they often have to assimilate to the dominant group’s social, economic, and cultural behaviors and customs to survive. For example in the U.S, there are many minority groups from all over the globe who immigrated to this country and they often have to go through various changes and adaptations to fit into society and gain citizenship in the country. These changes can be a challenge for them because they have to choose between their own cultural values, beliefs, and behaviors and assimilate to the U.S’ cultural values and customs. In the book it states that “their cultural ancestry is English, Scottish, Dutch and German which is the Anglo-Saxon core.” Therefore, the culture that immigrants in the U.S. have to adapt to is the Anglo-Saxon culture/ “American culture.” For most minorities immigrating to the U.S, one of the major factors that affected them is language barrier. In the United States English is the dominant language, many ...
Thermodynamics is defined as “the study of heat transfer and its relationship to doing work.” Specifically, it is a field of physics that has to do with “the transfer of energy from one place to another or from one form to another” (Drake P.1). Heat acts as a form of energy that equates to a total amount of work. Heat was recognized as a form of energy around the year 1798. Count Rumford (Sir Benjamin Thompson), a British military engineer, observed that “numerous amounts of heat could be generated in the boring of cannon barrels” (Drake P.1), which is where a cannon’s firing port is enlarged using a drill and immense amounts of heat to make the metal malleable. He also observed that “the work done in turning a blunt boring tool was proportional
mankind for centuries. Human like footprints dating back 300,000 years have been found in the
As we may all have once experienced, acculturation is one of the most common part of our lives, either by music, language or habits. In many occasions is more noticeable, but they are still a part of our entire lives. Through my own experiences and some of my classmates we were able to identified this topic in our own lives. I being born in USA but raised in Mexico until I was 16 years old, made my acculturation really clear when I came to this country without any previous knowledge of this language or society. Everything was completely different, but I was able to adapt to a new culture in a small period of time, learning a new language and successfully ending High School. Now that I came to college, I feel that I am going to a new acculturation process, not as harsh or obvious. But leaving and having many Asian friends have been acculturated me to their Asian culture little by little. Everything starts when you put in practice small customs as taking your shoes at the door, eating rice with anything and eating specially with chopsticks. I have been presented to this, and in my opinion have become acculturated to this culture. However, not everyone stories are the same. Lizandro Laverman experienced acculturation more indirectly by his parents experiences. His parents, basically, came to the United States to have a better lifestyle. He himself personally considers himself as an American. Although he is actually 75% Guatemalan and 25% German he considers himself to be 100% American. He also speak fluent in both languages, so the English and the Spanish, but speaks English more than anything. He also feels embraced when as Guatemalan dishes. In general, his parents are only used to a lifestyle that comes from Guatemala as train...
According to them, a climate record which is perfectly extending much deep into the Earth's past to a great extent has been properly assembled and rightly continues to be correctly built up, largely based on records of past sea levels, stable-isotope plus other analyses of sediment layers, periglacial and glacial processes, faunal and floral records, cores permanently or temporarily removed from deep accumulations of ice and geologically supportive evidence from borehole temperature related profiles. It is to be highly noted that by the instrumental record, more recent data are provided with a lot of perfection for better understanding and awareness. On the other hand, general circulation models which are perfectly based on the physical sciences are frequently used in this particular field in theoretical approaches in order to match past climate data with predictable future projections, and link effects and causes in climate change.
This definition of this law states that energy converts from one form to another and it cannot be created nor destroyed. Its attempt to explain the universe and energy narrows the boundaries of intricacy to present a sophisticated understanding. At times, people do not pay attention where energy comes from, but it appears in their surroundings and in what they partake in doing. While it is not tangible, it exists through vision such as fire, electricity, and even humans doing work, which ties to energy. One example is that “turning on a light [switch] would seem to produce energy; however, it is electrical energy that is converted” (“The Three Laws of Thermodynamics”). All objects that handles electricity follows this law of thermodynamics where energy is transferred to the light to produce the energy to allow the light to work. For change in energy, heat transfer along with the work output applies for greater energy. A relating scenario that intertwines with this is an example of how a hot object such as coffee can transfer its heat, which is also energy, to a person’s hand, and after it can disperse and decrease in temperature. Furthermore, ever since Carnot’s contribution to thermodynamics, scientists apply this knowledge for the energy around people. Through experiments, energy exists around the world and harnessing