Reading Response

The way men and women communicate is very different in a variety of ways. Their writing styles differ, there relationships with those of the same sex, and how they behave in public. Women tend to be more open with their feelings while men stereotypically hide theirs. The part that I found most interesting in Tanmen’s “Put Down that Paper and Talk to Me” was the Best Friends excerpt. I know from my own life that I talk to my best friend almost constantly. I text her if I see someone worth talking about, I call her after every class, and see her for hours everyday. Of course our relationship has changed since coming to college because we are with each other a lot more, where as in high school we had our families to go home to and other factors. I also know from experience how males handle there friendships. Guys don’t talk or text there friends throughout the day, they just assume they will call them later for dinner, play basketball, workout or whatever manly activity they enjoy. I also found it interesting that when women are asked who there best friend is they almost always say the one whom they talk to daily. While men say the guy who hangs out with them the most, not the one that he talks to. The “Comfort of Home” section was also very true. I know that when my father comes home from work all he wants to do is eat a nice dinner and watch television. Where as my mother comes home and asks me about my day and tells me all about her day at work, she hardly ever just sits down and watches TV in silence. The stereotypes of men and women’s communication stand strong for the most part. Occasionally you will find a talkative man and there’s always that quiet reserved girl.

Language Memoir

As I walked into my first day of Spanish class in ninth grade I was a little apprehensive to learning a new language. I had taken Spanish in elementary school, but that was easier and simpler vocabulary, now I was in the big time. My teacher that year was Senora Corbett who was a short, lively middle aged woman who was a legend at my high school. She would yell randomly and called you out in class for almost anything, but learning Spanish in her classroom came easily for me and I received an A. Thinking I was a pro at this language stuff I signed up for honors Spanish two the following year. That next year I had Senora Salters who was an amazing teacher. She had us do small skits with a group, projects in Spanish, and weekly vocabulary quizzes. All of that would seem like hell to a 15 year old sophomore, but for some reason everyone loved her. Again I excelled in her class because I was interested through her teaching. That summer I moved from Ft. Myers, Florida to Chattanooga, TN. I had been going to a relatively large public high school and I would now be attending a small private all-girls school. Terrified of switching schools 800 miles away my junior year I thought that at least I would have an interesting Spanish class and hopefully meet some new friends. Spanish was my second period of the day and I arrived anxiously, hoping that I would have a fun teacher and maybe one of the girls who invited me to sit with her in assembly would be in my class. Unfortunately none of my newfound friends were there, but my teacher did seem energetic and interesting. Senor Akers I would soon find out was energetic, but maybe slightly off color and definitely had a reputation throughout school. The class started slowly with reading many stories and briefly discussing them, but all of a sudden I felt lost. I had no idea what this man was saying to me as he asked the class questions, and luckily it appeared no one else did. I struggled through the first semester obtaining a C+, certainly not the grade I was used to in Spanish classes. The following semester we transitioned into lots of compositions and short essays. I was left clueless as he would not clearly explain the different forms of verbs and conjunctions that the Spanish language uses. I quickly became frustrated and my lack of effort in the class was declining. My Mom suggested I go to his help session. I began attending it at least once a week, but still found the class difficult. I somehow pulled out an A the next semester, clearly out of effort to excel, but my interest in the Spanish language declined rapidly after that year.
Reading the stories about different people’s struggles to learn English certainly reminds me of my difficult times with trying to understand Spanish. Almost all of us take for granted the wonderful gift of English that we all have. For it is a language that nearly every person in the world can recognize, and many know how to communicate with it on a basic level. For anyone who has ever tried to learn a foreign language, whether or not they excelled in it, everyone had a rough spot along the way. We should all recognize just how difficult it is for Hispanics and many other non-English speakers to learn English and not to punish them or look down upon them for not being able to speak our complicated language as fluently as us.

620 words.

First Reading Response

Language is a combination of symbols and sounds we use to communicate with those around us. How do we know what a chair is though? We could call it any other name and it would still be something that you sat in. The way we relate a sound to a meaning is very interesting to me. I know that we understand meanings of words and sounds by repetition and through our parents or caretakers directions, but the psychology of language is what most interests me. In the reading from About Language, Rodriguez describes how when he was a small child he would think of English and American voices as the public language and when he heard Spanish he would consider that a language to be spoken inside a private place. English had a high pitched sound to him that made him feel left out because he could not speak it as fast or fluently as Americans; where as Spanish had a soothing, comforting sound that made him feel at ease, like in his home.
Language is something that can make you feel at home or lost and confused in the world. If you are unfamiliar with a particular language you typically become very nervous and flustered, and your sentences become fragmented and confusing. However, when you are speaking a language in which you are fluent in and confident things come easily and you are able to express abstract ideas and have deep intellectual conversations.