English 101 - Dr. Mandy Suhr-Sytsma
Lens Essay - Abstract
For this project of my English 101 class, I wrote about Suhanthie Motha's Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching: Creating Responsible and Ethical Anti-racist Practice and Deborah Miranda's "Intensive Spanish: A Language Acquisition Resistance Journal" in the her piece, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir. Both texts explore the concept of acquiring and becoming competent in a new language, Through this essay it was my goal to look at Motha's text through the lens of Miranda to come to a conclusion about learning languages, and the overall process of how one should approach the topic. I begin my essay with explaining how Motha argues that the English language upholds ideas of power and racial inequalities because of its history, while still agreeing that the English language allows for access to a greater world with more possibilities. I then explore Miranda's argument of appreciation toward language recovery and discussion of how learning a globally dominating language can feel diminishing toward ones own heritage. While these texts have very different purposes, they complement each other and show great parallels. Toward the end of the paper, I conclude that engagement in an ethically conscious way of learning a globally dominating languages while showing appreciation to ones own heritage and past through language recovery is ideal when exploring learning a language. I find relevance in this topic as becoming multilingual has many positive effects, and most importantly it increases cultural awareness due to the deep link between culture and language.
Works Cited:
Miranda, Deborah A. "Intensive Spanish: A Language Acquisition Resistance Journal." Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir. Berkeley: Heyday, 2013. 137-39. Print.
Motha, Suhanthie. Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching: Creating Responsible and Ethical Anti-racist Practice. New York: Teachers College, 2014. Print.
Works Cited:
Miranda, Deborah A. "Intensive Spanish: A Language Acquisition Resistance Journal." Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir. Berkeley: Heyday, 2013. 137-39. Print.
Motha, Suhanthie. Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching: Creating Responsible and Ethical Anti-racist Practice. New York: Teachers College, 2014. Print.