Audio Reflection

I thought this assignment was actually pretty great because we don’t often take the time to reflect about how we take our backgrounds for granted. It was nice to hear a part of everyone’s stories and also situations that help shaped them into the person they are today. I didn’t expect literally every student in the class to have a story about their language, regardless if it impacted them positively or negatively. Some repetitive themes that were showing up often in the recordings were regrets, judgements, and lack of sympathy from others. I also realized that many of the students has similar stories to mine and I was really able to empathize with their situation. I honestly think this coincidence wouldn’t have occurred if we were living in another city.

I really enjoyed listening to ZhenYuan recording. Her recording definitely moved me since I was also once someone who didn’t enjoy speaking to anyone else but my family because English was not my first language. Having so many classes with her, I understand that she’s quiet and shy. It’s ironic because I envy her Chinese speaking abilities, but she wishes her English was better. We’re in literally opposite situations, but it’s much easier for her to learn English and eventually be comfortable in our settings. However, it’s much harder for me to improve my Chinese, since there’s not many people I can talk to with it. But I’m glad there were other people in the class who has the same language situation as me. For example, Anson and Jacky, we all started forgetting our first language slowly when we learned English. We turn to code switching to communicate with our relative and friends. Additionally, another recording that really stood out to me was Matthew’s. Matthew recording reminded me of the Eric Liu reading piece. Matthew stated that everyone probably has this preconceived notion that we judge him because of his nationality but really just like everyone else in the class, he struggles with his own language identity. Just like everyone else in the class, he is also insecure about his accent and ability to speak Italian.

Overall, I’m actually really glad I was able to learn all my classmates’ language backgrounds. It’s really unfortunate that many of us didn’t take language seriously at a young age. Now, we have so much going on that it’s hard to accumulate to a “new” language.

Some questions I definitely want to ask my classmates is what’s the next step? So, are we going to continue this code-switching problem or maybe down the line, we may actually preserve our cultures and hope it stays in the family line?