Audio Essay Reflection

Listening to my voice was a strange experience, but I really enjoyed this assignment. I never thought I would feel so vulnerable hearing my own voice out loud, but then I also felt comfortable. You never really think your linguistic identity and this assignment is so different from any others I have ever done. I have been thinking about my linguistic identity for a couple of days before and after writing the assignment, and it made me realize that my family can not say a full English sentence with throwing in at least one Russian word .I’m glad to see that my some of my peers can relate to my linguistic identity and my story because I didn’t think anyone would and I was surprised. I enjoyed the experience of sharing my story about my linguistic identity and listening to what other people had to say. I realized that even though we are from such different backgrounds, our struggles were all similar. We all had similar struggles like fitting in or learning to fight the language barrier and adapt. We are all different people coming from different places, but I felt like we connected by sharing personal stories.
I learned that many of my classmates came from all over and no one’s story was easy. I was surprised to hear that almost all my peers struggled with their linguistic identity and how almost everybody is bilingual. Putting myself in my peer’s shoes, gave me a new understanding of what it means to be an immigrant or have immigrant parents. I learned that many of my peers had to sacrifice a lot for their parents who don’t speak English.I also noticed that so many of my peers shared a similar theme of feeling isolated from not fluently knowing a language. Gary’s story stood out to me when he couldn’t find the right words to ask his teacher to go to the bathroom. I empathized with him and couldn’t imagine what that could’ve been like at such a young age. I learned that Simon’s neighborhood is similar to mine, whereas he is primarily Polish and mine is predominantly Russian. Maria grew up in a similar community to mine, and I found it interesting that she grew speaking only Ukrainian and then learned Russian in daycare because people in her neighborhood were mostly Russian and she had to adapt.
Listening to my peers, I found a central theme. Every one of us was attempting to adapt, and we all stood out through our different cultures. Moving to the United States can be a very stressful experience. Everything is unfamiliar; from the weather, landscape and language to food, fashion, values, and customs. This becomes a disadvantage until you break this language barrier.