Throughout this semester, we have been doing so much self-reflection in terms of our writing journey. We also had a conversation about the reflections that we have done in this class during mid-semester. I am someone who loves doing reflections and I believe this is something extremely important for us as college students as well as writers.
In ancient China, there is a say and it means, “I reflect on myself many times a day: did I try my best when helping others? Did I make friends with sincereness and trust? Did I review the knowledge I learned today?” I like doing reflections mainly because I get to know myself a lot better than before. I get to look back and see what are the progress that I have made so far, and this to me, can be a strong encourage towards the future. I am also able to see what are my weaknesses so that I could improve in the future. Reflection for me is something that helps me to be clear about where am I towards achieving a goal or just in my journey in general. In addition, reflections also helped me emotionally. It helps me to be thankful and appreciate the people and events that helped me throughout my journey and create a better emotional bond with them.
As a college student, there are endless opportunities and possibilities in front of us. Therefore, I believe it is especially important to do some reflection which will help us to know what the next step should be and eventually will improve the final outcome. As a writer, doing reflections benefited me endlessly. Looking back at what I wrote can inspire me in my new writing pieces. Reflections not only helped me to see how much progress that I made also make me think about am I doing this in the way I wanted? Do I have to care about this so much? Why not look into this topic in a different approach?
I think Bad Ideas About Writingis what influenced me the most in terms of coming up with our advocacy project. For one of the reading assignments, I read a bunch of articles that talks about good English and standard English, such as “Good Writers Always Follow My Rules” by Monique Dufour and Jennifer Ahern-Dodson, “Official American English is Best” by Steven Alvarez, “There is One Correct Way of Writing and Speaking” by Anjali Pattanayak, and “African American Language is not Good English” by Jennifer M. Cunningham.
After reading these powerful articles as well as relate to my own personal experience and stories that I have heard around me. When I was a freshman in college, I took a sociology class online and my professor commented on my first assignment, “next time, please check your grammar before submitting it.” I was somewhat confident in my English writing. Nonetheless, ever since then, I became super conscious about my writing and I became a frequent visitor to the writing center.
Since English is not their first language, many students are conscious about their English. There is rarely any international students are willing to choose English as their major because they simply believe that it is impossible. Fun fact to share, as the only English major among Chinese International student, my friends who are nonnative speakers of English will often come to me for grammar or sentence phrasing help for their papers or assignments. At first, I thought this is very interesting because I don’t believe I am skillful enough to be able to help them. Later on, this becomes something very common to me. Generally, if I have free time, I am more than willing to help them out because I appreciate the fact that they have trust in me. Something that I usually say to them after helping them is “your paper is amazing! I love all of your ideas” or “I truly can’t find mistakes in your paper because your grammar is great!” I tried to encourage them and help them to gain more confidence.
As an international student, I noticed that in the international student or nonnative speakers of English community at SJU conscious about their writing in every single detail not just for their academic studies. One of my friends comes to me for help every time before she has to send an important email, she will ask me to correct her grammar or to help her to rephrase some awkward sentences to make sure there is no miscommunication or misunderstandings.
As I noticed these issues, I really want to give acknowledgment and attention multilingual students at SJU as my advocacy project. I decided to join the group project with Nusrat, Esmeralda, and Justina by creating an Instagram account @writersof_SJU. In this account, we want to serve as a channel for the people to speak up to the power in terms of improving SJU’s writers’ experiences. I tried to encourage my friends, classmates, professors, and co-workers engaged in this project to share their thoughts and ideas by posting it on Instagram posts and stories. Moreover, I saved a series on the Instagram story called “To Multilingual” where I gather people’s thoughts as well as my owns for the multilingual students as a form of recognition for them. Please feel free to follow us on Instagram and share your thoughts with us!
For the recent two weeks, one of my co-workers from work dyed his hair first into a neon green, then in bright purple. Soon after he dyed his hair, he has become an eye-attracting person and people have been talking about dye their hair. I noticed that people who are around the same age as him are very acceptable, but not so the older generations. So, my coworker started to share the dramatic reaction story of how his mother found out he dyed his hair.
Similarly, I saw everyone was amazed by the article we read earlier The Skin We Ink: Tattoos, Literacy, and a New English Education by David E. Kirkland. Before reading this article, it is kind of hard for us to relate to tattoos and literature together. In fact, things like tattoos, painting, and music are all literacy. We cannot look down on them simply because it is not the format of literature that we are familiar with. (Not to mention, this semester, I am studying literacy in food at Queens, NY with Dr. Alvarez. Food carries literacy too! If you are interested, check out my food blog “Belly Growling Iris”) Nonetheless, many people assume tattoos are useless and stupid. I often heard people saying “you will regard years after you get your tattoo” or “you can’t do that because only the bad kids tattoo themselves.”
These two thoughts remind me of “Rhetoric is Synonymous with Empty Speech” by Patricia Roberts-Miller from Bad Ideas About Writingas well as “Official American English is Best” by Steven Alvarez. Things like “Rhetoric” often assumed as “useless” and “American English” often assumed as “the best”. This really made me questions “why we care so much of certain things” and “why we assume a lot of other things”. Most interestingly, both of the things that we care/assume aren’t essential or not a big deal at all.
Furthermore, I personally enjoy the piece entitled “Writing Knowledge Transfers Easily” by Ellen Carillo. I often experience when my introduction course professor told us:
The similar situation mentioned in one of our classmate’s blog about writing a formal email. No one really taught us in our life about how to write a formal email, yet professors assume that we can write a formal email when contacting them. Carillo points out that “It is a myth that students will automatically apply—or transfer (the term most often used in educational psychology and composition studies) what they learn in their lower-level writing courses to their upper-level ones. They simply won’t.” The key word here is “automatically” which pretty much means “assume”. Professors should not assume we can transfer our knowledge learned easily and automatically. The transfer of knowledge can happen gradually but definitely not automatically and should not be taken for granted. Therefore, Carillo argues that the transfer of knowledge shouldn’t be ignored, instead should be taught. The better the knowledge we transferred, the better understanding we will gain.
Again, tattoos, hair colors, rhetoric, or knowledge, none of them should be assumed and please, get to know them before judging them.
In 2.5 “Writing is Performative”, Lunsford emphasized three ways that writing can be performative. First and foremost, writing can be performative because language and writing have the capacity to act, to do things in the world. Examples are given such as, “I now pronounce you husband and wife” and “I sentence you to X”. I interpret this as writing is performative that it contains the power of execution.
Secondly, Lunsford highlights that writing can be performative because writing has the capacity to perform. The Stanford Study of Writing told researchers over and over again that “good writing is writing that makes something good happen in the world.” I believe that writing acts and acts very well.
Lastly, Lunsford focuses on writing can be performative because writing is epistemic. “Writing does not simply record thought or knowledge, but rather writing has the capacity to actually produce thought and knowledge.” To me, this reminds me of writing also serves as an inspiration for other writings or other things in general.
The term “performative” caught my eyes in the first place. I learned this term from my Literary Theory class last semester. Performative was first coined by Austin. Austin points out that language is referential and is something cannot be evaluated by true or false. It is an action that brings something into beings. Moreover, “performative” attaches to a set of social conventions that brings something into the present at that very moment. It cannot stand timeless and spaceless but have to set in a specific time and place. I felt like by knowing this term “performative” from Austin helped a lot for me to understand this passage.
Relate this to us, as students, we write to perform in realistic ways. We write for a good grade and for a title as a good student. This is also a way for writing to be performative. In addition, we perform in writing in order to show our education/intellect level where it shows in “Academia, Love me Back”. In Martiínez’s situation, she mentioned, “Some of you won’t understand how every word that I use to describe this moment was diligently selected in a way that would properly reflect my intellect.” In class, we discussed about how different forms of writing such as social media posts, journals, drawing, and even tattoos are all performative writing. In the essay “Rhetoric is synonymous with empty speech” by Patricia Roberts-Miller from Bad Ideas About Writing, she highlights that people usually understand rhetoric as “something you add on to sentences (such as meta-phor) that decorates and obscures communication.” It is very interesting to look at these examples through the lens of “writing is performative”. These writing perform in various styles and for multiple purposes. And it is also interesting to see that how we “perform” a lot in our writing rather than speaking.
As we have been reading, commenting, and discussing our own and our peers’ interviews, the wonderful discussion we had the other class was very memorable for me. It was very interesting for me to look at the interviews through different lenses. In class, one group focused on the obstacles that interviewees encountered and how does it relate to writing. In this part of the discussion, the idea of “identity” brought up, as well as some important components like race, culture, languages, and location. Another group put emphasize on the environment that the interviewees were in. In their discussion, they came up with a few major environments that shaped the interviewees, work, school, country, headspace, home, and the people that interviewees were around.
During the discussion, we also looked at a lot of examples based on our peers’ interviews. I really think that I gained a lot better understanding of these interviews. By looking back to it, I have some thoughts and I thought I’d share them with you:
Two major elements that were being discussed were environment and identity. Speaking about environments, no matter it is the workplace, home, or school, they all can be concluded as the society. In addition, environments also involve time and space, it has to be at a certain time and a certain place. Environments cannot be timeless and spaceless because different time and space can create different environments.
With that being said, it draws the connection to identity. Each individual in this society has their own identities. Environment shapes identities. Yet, each individual with distinct identities leads the society into what it is right now. Therefore, I see a mutual effect between environment and identity. We have looked at each one of them individually during our discussion. Moreover, we should also look at them as a whole. Environment and identity are interrelated and interacted. I believe we can only have a well-rounded understanding by looking at both of them at the same time.
I did my interview with my aunt. After finishing this interview, I read a couple of interviews from my peers. I also looked back on my own interview. I had a few reflections and I want to share these “behind the scenes thoughts” with you all by a Q&A format. Hopefully after reading my thoughts preparing and during this interview will give you a better sense of my interview in general. Before we start, here is the questions that I prepared and here is the interview transcript.
A: I chose my aunt as my interviewee mainly because of three reasons：
My aunt is older than me and my peers, so I was hoping to hear stories of her journey, it could be in her teens, 20s, 30s, or more recent
My aunt has been living, studying, and working in three countries. I believe she is very experienced
Her major in college was Chemistry, then she worked as a data analyst. I don’t see any direct connection between herself and writing. Therefore, I want to get to know more about it.
Q: How did I come up with these interview questions?
A: I actually spent quite a lot of time coming up with these interview questions. I first looked at the handouts that were given by Dr. Geller. I highlighted a couple of interview questions that I might be interested in. Meanwhile, I also jotted down any questions that I came up with while looking at these questions. Then, I put all the questions together. When I read through all of them, I thought it would be helpful for both the interviewer and the interviewee, or even in the future for the reader to look at these questions if I divided these questions into sections. On the next day, I noticed that there are a couple of questions that are too general and I can personally assume the answer from my interviewee. Therefore, I made some changes to these questions. I made them more specific.
A: I contacted my interviewee during my spring break. Since she works a day job on weekdays, we decided to have the interview on the weekend. I also asked her permission to record the entire interview. She is based in Pennsylvania so that we both agree to do this interview through a phone call. I have never had an interview through the phone, I thought it was something very interesting to try.
Q: How did the interview go?
A: The interview went very well. It was actually better than I expected. My aunt was willing to share some of her stories and examples. I get to know a lot more information on the topic of writing as well as my aunt as a person.
Q: How was the transcribing process?
A: It took me a lot of time hahaha. I asked my aunt to do this interview in the language that she feels the most comfortable. She chose to use Chinese. I recorded the whole thing and I tried to translate the whole while listening to the audio. My mind had to transition quickly between Chinese and English. It was quite a project! 🙂
I was a little nervous for the interview before I came up with an interviewee. I don’t know who to ask for. However, once I came up with an interviewee, my nervousness went away. I have interviewed people a couple of times before this, so I know what to expect. Also, the interviewee is my aunt which also helps to reduce my nervousness.
After I came up with the questions, I had some assumptions for her answers. Most of my assumptions are correct:)
My aunt has been living in English speaking countries for over 20 years. I don’t see any problems with her English. I was wondering why she still prefers Chinese than English. I realized that it could be my aunt’s consciousness about her accent. I feel like this could also relate to the other concepts and ideas that we have been talking about this semester. What kind of accent is the best? What kind of writing is the best? Who set the standards? Why we have to be so conscious about it?
In class, we anonymously wrote down our feeling towards the meta writing in ENG 3700 so far and our expectation for the latter half of the semester on a piece of the flashcard. I was very excited and curious about my peers’ thoughts.
By looking at the flashcards, I immediately noticed that people write in different forms. There are some people who wrote in regular sentences, some did in bullet points, and some in short phrases. I really appreciate the respect that Dr. Geller gave us because I can tell when Dr. Geller is typing these answers out, she tried to use the exact signs and marks that we used.
One of the Ideas that most of the class agree were freedom and non-judgemental. These are something we enjoyed in ENG 3700 and it is hard to find in anywhere else at least for academic writing. In most of my classes, my professors give detailed instructions for each and every paper and we suppose to follow what was required in order to get a good grade. The in class reflection we had for meta writing in ENG 3700 inspired me a lot. In a way, professors giving instructions for writings is because they do not trust their students enough. They believe without their instructions, students cannot write a good paper and cannot meet his/her expectations. On the contrary, the great amount of freedom that we received and the non-judgemental writing environment that we have represent the trust given by our professor. The freeness and non-judgemental environment built in ENG 3700 class eventually allow us to write something deeply from our heart and anything that we really enjoy writing about. Speaking of freedom, I find that the idea of freedom and non-judgemental not only embodied in the writings that we have done for ENG 3700 but is in ENG 3700 in general. I feel very comfortable when I am in class because everyone’s opinion is valued and respected. Thus, it strongly encourages me to share my opinions and exchange thoughts and ideas with my peers.
Furthermore, for the latter half of the semester, I wish that the writing in ENG 3700 is the same as we already have and to add some fun elements such as trying different formats, forms and trying out something challenging. I noticed that someone wrote “I don’t know” on their flashcard for the latter half of the semester. I kind of agree with this because I don’t know what writings and readings that we will be doing but I am excited for them.
I like to write and if I am writing something that I enjoy, I can write a lot. However, sometimes, when it comes to academic writing, I stuck because of the grading, the standards, and I might not write something completely different from what the professor wants from me.
I wonder if other college students feel the same as I do. I googled for “writing in college meme”. After I looked them through, I thought they were very interesting and I want to share these memes with you all and my thoughts on them.
What caught my eye about this meme is “giving your professor what you think they want”. In my opinion, this is the trickiest part of academic writing. Some people know well what the professor wants from the assignment and they can get a good grade without knowing what they are actually writing. However, if someone really puts efforts in their writing but result in a bad grade because the writing is not what the professor wants. This can be very discouraging to college writers. It is very sad to acknowledge that, for most of the time, what we what to write is not what the professor wanted. Instead, I believe it is necessary for the professors to get to know the wide range of backgrounds that students come from. Thus, professors should be understanding and accepting of different ideas and creative answers. Click here for my last blog post which I talked about related issue.
I agree with this meme because there are examples in my real life that either the professors are pushing their viewpoints and opinions on me or my friends. One of my friends who is an international student attending college in Boston, MA. Last semester, in one of his classes, the professor offered extra credit opportunity for students who vote for the election and also pushing his political view to the entire class. However, he is an international student and not qualify to vote in the U.S. He was told by the professor that if he wants to participate in this extra credit opportunity, he will have to do some extra work which is to write a paper. I also found some similar stories here.
I feel terribly sorry for people who feel this way for their college writing. I can understand this situation when students don’t actually learn things but ask to write about it. I believe this usually happens when the student did not get enough knowledge in the field of study and not passionate about the topics that they are going to write. I feel like writing in college provided us the opportunity to express our opinions on certain topics, but more freedom is appreciated in terms of topics, styles, tones, perspectives, and forms.
Why these memes are popular? Because these memes are entertaining to look at, at the same time, they are telling the truth.
Here are more memes that I found and I thought it is interesting to look at. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section.
To be very honest, I waited a long time before I start to write my blogs. The only reason was I don’t know what topics should I write about and what to expect. Usually, my writing in school is designed by the instructors. The instructors provided me with topics to choose from, rules to follow, and sometimes even structures. Therefore, I was trained to follow directions given by my teachers and professors. I kept blogs for other courses but I was instructed to write specific things for each blog post. Whenever there is a writing assignment, I tend to go and look for instructions subconsciously. Nevertheless, there are no specific instructions given for blogs in this course so I started to question. What should I blog about?
Two of the most helpful discussions that we had in class was the midterm reflection and the quick talk about blogs. During the quick talks, I understand that we should not just focus on the readings and the discussion we had in class. It is necessary for us to connect what we have learned to everything else. It could be something we learned from another class, a piece of news from this morning, something happen on a daily basis, a random conversation with friends… During the midterm reflection, I learned that this course is trying to create a community that everyone feels comfortable writing.
Right after these discussions, my first thought was I appreciate the freedom and the complete control we have for blogs. I was able to blog about the things I really want to express and some interesting stuff. The freedom and opportunity that is not possible for other classes. For my other classes, I used to be scared if the professor does not provide instructions on what to write because I will have a blank page in front of me for days. Now, I am excited about the blank pages in front of me because that means I can write whatever I desire. Therefore, there should not be struggling with what to write on blog posts.
Moreover, subconsciously seeking instructions given by the professor is an expression and a desire for meeting the standard. But who set the standards? Why there are standards? According to Merriam-Webster, standard is defined as “a level of quality, achievement, etc., that is considered acceptable or desirable.” We have been told ever since we were little to meet all kinds of standards from behaviors to academic achievements. However, we have never thought about whether these standards are good fits for us or not.
I still remember that one day a gentleman walked in our classroom and asked: “is there a class going on?” This is probably the simplest example of what I am talking about. In his mind, our class did not meet the standard of class that he had in mind. Possibly his standard of a class is definitely not like everyone sits in a circle and talks. Again, just because our class does not look like the “standard class”, are we not having class? Talking about standard, it also reminds me about standardized testing. Are they good? Are they fair for everyone?
In a similar way, writing standards such as grammar, structure are essential but are not everything in writing. In addition, receiving feedback from my peers is very encouraging for me to write more interesting and thoughtful blogs. Getting advice from Dr. Geller always help me to think deeper and play with different forms of expressing.
Recently, a professor from Duke University, Megan Neely, emailed all the students in the program by highlighting English is the only language should be used on campus. In the email, Neely claimed two unnamed faculty members complained to her about a group of students speaking Chinese “very loudly” in a common area.
They asked to see photos of the first and second-year students so that they could “remember them if the students ever interviewed for an internship or asked to work with them for a master’s project.”
“They were disappointed that these students were not taking the opportunity to improve their English and were being so impolite as to have a conversation that not everyone on the floor could understand,” Neely wrote in the Friday email. “To international students, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep these unintended consequences in mind when you choose to speak in Chinese in the building.”
Here is a quick video for you to catch with what was going on:
As an international student, the incident quickly raised so much attention among the Chinese international student community. Certainly, this made me very angry and I believe forbidding someone to speak by using the language of their choice, especially during their free time, is an insult and very ridiculous.
The incident reminded me of my experience a few weeks ago. I am a mentor in Project AIM where is an on campus organization that international upper-class men help freshman international students with their cultural assimilation, academic achievement, and career development. During a meeting, Project AIM provided us an overview of all the mentors’ information, like the country of origins, majors. It appeared that I was the only mentor who is majoring in English. Surprisingly, after the meeting, two mentors came to me and told me I was very brave to be an English major as English is not my first language. They said that they were nervous when they took general English requirements. They mentioned the reading was too much to handle for them and it was hard to write very frequently in a language that they don’t feel comfortable with.
I believe that writing just like speaking is a form of expression by using the language of a person’s choice. There is no right or wrong about using any language and there is no superior language or inferior language. If you are a multilingual person, it is your freedom to choose which language you want to use in any conversation.
Writing plays an important role in not only study and work, but also in everyday life. If a person has excellent writing skills, he or she will be able to communicate deeply and integrate into society without problems. On the contrary, if someone with poor writing skills, it is very difficult to integrate into society. It is due to the fact that the person cannot have in-depth communications with others in a certain language environment. Therefore, if he/she wants to blend into this language environment/society, he/she must master the ability of writing. It is important to note that although there are full of simple communications in our daily life in-depth communication is something that we cannot ignore.
Fluency in languages can be a challenge for multilingual people and they often question about their identity and a sense of self due to lack of in-depth conversations in the language that they are not comfortable with. There are plenty of articles and novels addressed this problem suffered by multilingual people. One of my favorite books that I read from last year was called Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee. Henry is the main character and he is a Korean American. He has heavy accents when he speaks English and cannot write very well in English. As a result, other people often laugh at his English. At home, all his family members speak Korean but he can only speak broken Korean and can barely write anything in Korean. He is very struggling and he does not see himself as a Korean nor an American. A similar idea being addressed in the Mother Tongue by Amy Tan where she mentioned there are different kinds of Englishes that she grew up with.
All in all, I believe it is necessary for everyone to understand and respect the multilingual speakers or writers as the language that they are using might not be the one that they feel comfortable with. Everyone should pay more respect for multilingual speakers. And for all the multilingual people, I’d like to borrow a sentence from “A letter to multilingual students”: “To multilingual and international students at Cornell and all other institutions: I hope that you know that your resilience does not go unnoticed. I hope you continue speaking — loudly and proudly — in whatever language you so desire. Anyone who has a problem with it will just have to catch up because as far as I’m concerned, you always have a choice.”
A Study of Teaching of Writing 