From the day we received the syllabus for this class, I was intrigued and plagued by questions about the readings we were going to read in this class. “Were we going to analyze these texts like we did in High school? Would we have to write essays in a timed setting? What kind of texts are we going to be reading? Would we analyze poetry?”

Reading one of the first essays for the class, Mother Tongue, a personal essay, by Amy Tan deeply impacted me. I began to wonder whether the same stories that Tan wrote about had happened with someone that I knew. I had not thought about the discrimination that people might face due to their style of speaking. This leads me to the second piece that impacted me most, Nobody Mean More to Me Than You by June Jordan. Reading this essay was eye opening and thought provoking in many different ways. Reading about the students’ reaction, while reading “Black English” for the first time in a classroom. It was amusing to read their reaction to the Color Purple by Alice Walker, it reminded me of my reaction when I first read the book in high school. I did not understand what was happening until I was almost a third of my way into the book, the students mentioned in the essay had a similar reaction as me. 

Both of these essays were enlightening to the various kinds of biases people face in society as a result of the different dialects of English that they speak. It also brought to my attention how society may unconsciously discriminate against someone because their language norm may not be the same as the majority. These texts further highlighted the importance of staying connected to one’s culture. After completing a few such readings, we began digging through memories of our own life to put into our first major assignment of the class. For the first time, I looked into my relationship with the different languages I grew up with. 

I began looking at the beauty of expressing myself in each of the languages, which helped me to grow as a writer. I tried to find ways of expressing myself with the same emotions and passion as I did in the other languages. During this first assignment, I took a lot of inspiration from books and articles that I read over the years. I wanted to be able to hold the reader’s attention like published authors do, by adding minute details about the characters appearance, the setting, and more. I attempted to convey my relationship with English intertwined with the presence of other languages, such as Hindi and Marathi, in the life of a young child growing up. A line that I think captures this effort beautifully is “The warm humid breeze carried the smell of old books and jaded pages.” In my narrative, I added details of a scene I vividly remember from Beautiful Creatures, that described a stormy scene and made me feel as if I was there, with the characters. 

Throughout the process of writing this paper, I was able to learn various techniques employed by writers that are often overlooked by readers. I used the methods from the different types of essays, articles, stories, and interviews we explored together in class. This helped me to captivate my readers in a similar way that I had been captivated in books. After writing the “Language and Literacy Narrative,” we got the chance to read over some of our fellow peers’ works. This helped me to connect better with my peers, as some of us had similar experiences, and their feedback on my work inspired me to make edits to my paper too. 

During the peer review, which was the second major assignment of the class, it was much easier to spot the rhetorical strategies that they had used due to the ample amount of practice in class and the freedom given to us, to not stick to the “formal” methods and conventions of English writing. We could write in ways we were comfortable in, which helped a lot of us who struggled to express ourselves within the strict norms that are usually taught. This freedom was visible in the ways that each person wrote their experience. Some wrote it formally, as it is widely taught, some wrote it in a first person view, and others wrote it in a memory format, which is what I did.

As we approached the final assignment of the class, I felt more prepared and confident in my refined writing skills. The final assignment was a research paper on a topic of our choosing. The rhetorical précis handouts and paraphrasing practice helped us to ease our way into the research paper as we had practice on paraphrasing and interpreting information needed to write our research paper. The support given to us to find sources for our research paper helped us to do so. Reading through these sources allowed me to tone the language of the paper according to my intended audience. This helped me to write an intricately detailed paper with relevant information synthesized in my own words. 

Overall, the process of engaging and learning to improve my writing skills taught me to get a better flow of words while writing. I learned the importance of taking your time with a paper in order to view it with a fresh mind, multiple times. Reading genres that I don’t usually do, pushed me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to get a deeper understanding of the messages that those pieces held. The one thing that I am most grateful for in this class is not only the friends that I made but also that it pushed me to begin reading again, which is something I thoroughly enjoy.