What is a piece of advice on responding to student work in Straub’s essay that is new and helpful to you, and how is it helpful? What is a piece of advice you wish a previous teacher had followed in commenting on your writing in high school, and how would it have been helpful?
One piece of advice that was new to me was not to be too general when commenting on someone’s writing. I never knew how much is too little or too much, so I would always keep my comments pretty broad. This is helpful because now I know it’s okay to get specific as it will help the writer, and now I expect to see particular comments on my writing that will help me improve my piece. One piece of advice I wish a previous teacher had followed in commenting on my paper in high school is not entirely rewriting some parts of my essay. I always felt like it was the right thing to do, but at one point, I realized my teacher wasn’t showing me how to improve a specific part in my essay; he was changing it to be “better” without teaching me how to strengthen my writing. It would have been helpful if the teacher didn’t rewrite some parts entirely in my essay because it would’ve helped me know what was wrong with it. Most of the time, I didn’t know why my teacher would rewrite parts of my essay; it was confusing because I wasn’t getting the knowledge I needed to write better. My final piece would look similar to the first draft except for the parts that my teacher completely changed.
Baldwin’s argument
Baldwin explains that Black English is a language rather and systemic racism is the reason why it is recognized as a dialect. He argues that language reveals a person’s identity and people shouldn’t be defined with a language that doesn’t identify them. Baldwin explains that White Americans would not sound the same if it weren’t for black Americans and that black Americans have created their own language to help them through the circumstances. This argument is related to Belmihoub and Corcoran ideas of translanguaging as translanguing is when people add new features to a language to adapt socially or in other words “to communicate in a variety of different circumstances’ ‘ (JTC 65). Baldwin explains that Black people have created their own language because of their circumstances. Anzandula explored the same ideas as Translanguaging. She explained that she spoke different languages with different people to adapt to the community. For example, Anzandula says “from kids and people my own age I picked up Pachuco.” Pachuco is one of the seven languages that Anzaldula speaks with different groups of people in order to adapt to each community.