Recording myself read my essay for two whole minutes was unlike any assignment I have ever done for a class. Sadly I couldn’t share my recording with the class since I spoke to fast. However, listening to my classmates recording was way more different than just reading their essays by ourselves. This different medium allowed me to be more interested in the writers essay because I wasn’t doing the basic process of reading another essay. In addition, able to listen to their tone and their way of talking really made it easier to understand their message or how they felt on a particular event they described. There was a couple of essays that consisted of students learning english and using that ability to help others who couldn’t understand it and translate it to their native language, also some students had their own native people wanting to speak english rather than their own mother language.
In Jenny’s and Elaine’s essay they both wrote about how they helped translate english to chinese to their family but they both had different feelings towards their action. In Jenny’s case once she was able to understand and speak english it started to become a job. She had to help her parents with everything written in english such as bills and go out grocery shopping because her parents couldn’t speak english. It was interfering with her lifestyle and her duties as a student. The incident when her parents got into a car crash and she had to wake up in the middle of the night rather than sleep and be ready for her test the next day shows how her learning english was sort of a curse. However in Elaine’s case she says how she she helped around in the house since she had learned english better than her parents made her feel like the “dominant” one in the house. For Elaine learning and being able to speak english had a positive effect on her part. Both Jenny and Elaine write about how they learned english as a way to fit in but once they did learn english, the effect of being the only one to speak and understand english in the family had different effects on them. Unlike Jenny and Elaine, Nazima experienced an unusual event that was related to her native language.
Nazima had learned english and at the same time knew how to speak her native language. Then her parents decided to move back to their home country, she then went to school there. The fact that in her school they didn’t speak their native language was pretty shocking. They made her speak english which made me wonder that now all other countries are trying to make kids start from a young age to speak english because of the status it holds. The fact that they aren’t speaking their native language in their native land shows how America has influenced the rest of the world with their language.
Overall, this new way of communicating essays through recording really gave a different sense to how people can understand ones feeling and thoughts. At first it was weird, but as we started listening to more and more recording it started to feel normal. The recordings sort of brought the essay to life with the actual writer reading it. I thought most people wouldn’t share most of their personal information since it was being shared with the whole class. However that wasn’t the case case most people were able share their personal situation in which their language played a huge role in their life and helped shaped them as a person.
Rabsang, Thanks for your feedback! I agree that there is something very powerful about hearing people tell their stories aloud. I hope you found it meaningful — and I know you will speak more slowly next time!