Mother Tongue

Hello and welcome back to this Lang and Lit blog. Its been too long since the last post, so I'm sure your "eager" to hear what I have to say. However this blog will be slightly different from the others, this shall be an opinionated discussion about Amy Tans, "Mother Tongue" article. Her article goes through multiple struggles that non native English speakers face when moving to a prominently English country. How they are treated differently, schools often move them away from English and into maths and sciences, as well as just being viewed differently.

The final point above is what I want to focus on, how society see's these people due to their lack of skill with the english language. The first example of this would be from Amy Tans article, from when she begins to talk about her life in school. Throughout her years in education she was always pushed towards the mathematical and scientific side of education, due to her struggles with english as well as for here ethnicity, with the stereotype of Asians "being exceptional at maths and science". This is highly unethical and in a way racist, because of her skin and accent she was treated slightly different and not as an equal in her english class. For an Ib student, I feel that this truly is unfair, and have seen students with next to no knowledge of english become fluent speakers of the language. Although times have changed and people are a lot more opened-minded I still believe that this was an inappropriate response by the teachers. If we look into modern day society there are still many instances where this is happening. For example, have you ever changed the way you speak to match someone who is not a native english speaker, or have you seen someone do this. I've looked into this and have found that this is extremely common. Even I do it, when trying to communicate with someone who struggles at understanding the english language. I personally believe that you will be viewed differently based on you level of understanding and skill of a language, but should be phased by it because that can be changed, Amy Tan is a great example of this.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to new topics for this blog.

Good English and Bad

Hello again

For this post I am  going to discuss about a a recent text I have read, "Good English and Bad" by Bill Bryson. to begin I would like to talk about what exactly the  title is trying tell us about the text? Like is it going to be one that tells us which is wrong and which is right?, or possibly which was better English, with no alterations. 

The answer is no, because the text is about English language, its rules created by grammarian often simply ignored because of the over complicated words. Overall, the author of the text has sent a message about the standard use of the English language and its rules that have been forced onto us with  can have no actual reason. Then the author begins to use irony, saying that the reason why the word hopefully is not allowed to be used in an absolute value is because "somebody at New York Times once had a boss who wouldn't allow it because his professor had forbidden it, because his father thought it was ugly..., because he had been told so by his uncle..., and so on". I think author is  criticizing and questioning the standards above by mentioning some "pieces of advice" which after less than a century became "immutable rules". The example that the author is giving in this case is the rule according to which you should not end a sentence with a preposition. The text contains many more examples about the  rules of English and the way English has changed after it started  the "grammatical percepts" of Latin, which died thousands of years ago. 

Taken as a whole, this discussion made me think about my mistakes and made me realize how complex the English language really is. Reading this text, I found  some rules that are completely new to me, which gave me the  opportunity to learn something new. Which improves my English and my view of the English language. 

Thanks for reading

Meaning of a Name

Welcome Back

Today I will be exploring the meaning of my name, as well as what it means to me.  I've done a little research into my name, and have found a couple definitions from different languages. Lets begin with English, who actually took the name from the french, which means Grevaise spearman. After looking into it, I found that it means man who serves the spear, a master at using the spear. This was  quite an interesting find so I kept looking until I found that my name is also and ancient Hebrew/ pre-flood biblical  meaning rose (flower), as well as descending or follower of the lord. However these are not the reason for why i was given my name, its quite a humorous story. My parents wanted to keep my gender a surprise. They had already chosen a name for a girl but not for a boy, so on heir way to the hospital they started to argue about my name and my father just told my mom to name me after her favorite character from the series she was watching at the time.

My name has its own meaning to me, because I have my own identity and personality and use my name as a  mane factor to describe myself. Therefore you don't need to follow what is your name and what it means, make it your name and why it is part of your identity.

                                                                    Jarred

Welcome To a Language & Literature Blog

Welcome to my language and literature blog

This will be a blog based around my journey as a student who ha

s chosen the IB’s rigorous Language & literature course. I will be using this blog to convey my opinion on certain subjects and texts as well as to be a platform where I may share the knowledge that I will acquire through my diploma years.

However I am getting ahead of myself, my name is Jarred and I have just begun my first year of the International Baccalaureate diploma program, within this diploma students must choose six subjects to focus on and study over the span of two years. One of mine being the Language & Literature course, which promises to teach numerous new skills in the art of analysis, meaning students will learn to question and communicate over media, written texts and society. Making this subject more applicable to life outside of school-this truly excites me.

I have a great interest in art, which is tied to one of my future aspirations, that being that I would love to become a Graphics Designer and move into the field of advertisement. But you may be wondering how will this course aide me in my studies to becoming a graphics designer? It’s actually quite simple, this course will help me develop my skills in speech and presentation making it easier to communicate ideas to others in a work environment, as well as to expand my analytical capabilities, so I can examine society and media and apply this to the work I would be doing as a graphic designer. Another point to talk about is the fact that without language we would have no way to share our ideas, converse, elaborate etc. Making it an essential subject to study. 

With this all said, my journey as an IB Language and Literature student has only just begun.