The Second Essay of The Spring Semester

I recently submitted another essay for my English class with the topic this time being to write about my perspective on the issues relating to the privacy and freedom of speech. As part of the requirements for this essay, I also had to include three sources to cite from in order to support the arguments that I made in my essay. Finding those three sources was not that difficult, the real problem came from actually writing about the topic for the essay since I couldn’t think of anything decent to write. This problem lasted for an entire week as I tried to figure out how to make a good argument for my perspective on the First Amendment. Somehow I managed to write the entire essay by the end of the week but it still felt like I wasted more time than I should have for this assignment.

Even though I wrote the essay in the span of an entire week, I didn’t checked it over for any grammar mistakes or misspelled words. After saying that, I still don’t feel the need to go back and change anything I wrote since I already submitted it. It’s not like I think what I wrote was perfect or anything, there are probably a couple mistakes that I didn’t noticed at first but what’s done is done. Any changes made at all wouldn’t even improve the essay that much so it would be kind of a waster of time to just try to fix it. That’s about all I had to say about this assignment.

Bonus Blog - A little bit about myself...

After discussing in class today about the final assignment that would be given soon, I began thinking about my personal life as that should be what the assignment is based on if I understood the discussion correctly. For this entry, I will attempt to give a decent summary of the events leading to my current status as a college freshman. To start, I was an average student who did the best I could do during the years I spent in elementary school and middle school. Like most students, I got into trouble due to some mistakes that I made but they were somewhat resolve over time. Then my seemingly “average” life changed a bit when I entered high school. This “change” was the realization that I started to do better than most students in terms of academics. By the time I reached my senior year in high school, I was already a guarantee candidate for valedictorian which was the position I ended up having when I finished my last year in high school. As “amazing” as being the valedictorian sounded like, the only real reason I had this position was due to all the free time I had to study since I wasn’t that sociable with people. Practically everyone else in my senior grade during high school was busy with social events like parties or clubs while I was just by myself with only the school materials to keep me company. I’m not sure if this sounds pathetic or anything but I was fine with how things turn out since I managed to achieved high enough academic grades to enter college. That about sums up my story on how I got to where I am now.

Next topic of discussion is my perspective on life or something, the questions relating to my final assignment are kinda vague. Well to put it simply, I see life in a somewhat darwinian manner as I believe in survival of the fittest when it comes to achieving high ranks in whatever it is that has those ranks. If you want to be better than others at what you do or just to simply become better at it, then you need to put in the effort to improve despite how hard it can be. At least that’s what I think, anyone else is allowed to think differently.

Now the last point of discussion is what I want to know about the role of literacy in the lives of other people. If I had to know anything about it then I would want to know if literacy can actually improve a person's abilities when it comes to academics. It’s not like I am saying that literacy is important to be successful but it sure does help to know it for reading or writing. My point is that I want to know the exact effect that literacy has on people, whether it can improve a person’s performance drastically or not. In my own personal experience, learning to more about literacy has allowed me to improve my writing and reading abilities but that’s just me. What I really want to know is if literacy can improve anyone’s performance, no matter how big or small that boost can be.

That’s all I got, thanks for reading whatever I just wrote.

My Critique on Vershawn Ashanti Young's essay, "Should Writers Use They Own English"

For a class assignment, I read Vershawn Ashanti Young’s essay “Should Writers Use They Own English.” It was interesting to read Young’s as he discussed about the perspectives on what is considered “standard” english in comparison to what most people perceived as a “variation” of the english language. This essay made some good points on the “so-called varieties 'of English or dialect in relation to standard English, we're not dealin with two different languages; we're dealing with a common language.” That quote made sense on the concept of a common language as what is considered to be “standard” or “variation” of english does not make them separate languages. While Young made a good argument for the concept of a common language but his recommendation for a teaching style that supports this concept seems to be too much for a regular teacher to handle. As stated in Young’s essay, “I say we teach language descriptively. This mean we should, for instance, teach how language functions within and from various cultural perspectives. And we should teach what it take to understand, listen, and write in multiple dialects simultaneously.” The style of teaching that Young proposes would take too much time and effort to make it work effectively since there is simply too much to learn or understand about these “variations” of the english language while also having no guarantee that anyone would retain this information.

Then there is the type of english language that he uses in this essay. As shown in this quote, “Students be told that vernacular language should be reserved for the playground with friends or at a picnic with neighbors, and that standard English be used by professionals at work, in academic writing, and when communicating with important officials.” In that quote, Young has some obvious grammar differences in comparison to “standard” english as he uses phrase like “be told” to mean a phrase like “as told” or shown in the previous quotes that I used where he used the word “dealin” to mean “dealing.” To be honest, the reason I understood most of what Young was saying in this essay is due to my own knowledge in “standard” english as he used words or phrases that, if sounded out, resembles a lot of words and phrases I learned through “standard” english. While Young does make some good points in his essay, I don’t entirely agree with him when he says that people should be taught to understand all forms of the english language because using the “standard” version of the english language in a professional setting makes as much sense to me as wearing “business” clothing in a professional environment.

The point that I am trying to make is that it all comes down to preferences when deciding to use a “variation” of the english language or the “standard” english language as people have a choice to approach any sort of situation, in the verbal sense, with what they believe to be a reasonable solution, in other words the type of language they choose to use.