Alahmadi

Zyad Alahmadi Mrs. Linda Hoffmann Writing & inquiry in academic context I- combined-201380 11/30/2013

The language of mine a language is the way the people communicate with each other. It is the tool to express our feelings, express our ideas, and express ourselves. Without the languages that we use and follow its rules, we wouldnt be as civilized as we are today. The people that know how to speak many languages are more comfortable to interact with many people around the globe and express their feeling to them, and even learn from them or about their own culture. Therefore, the one that can speak a certain language other than the one he grew up with is actually exposed to the culture of the people that speaks that language. Speaking about literacy, literacy is described as our ability to write and read. In most cases, the literacy of a certain language is exposing to it standard more. So, when we want to write an official letter in English for instance, we are going to use a formal Standard English to make sure that all the people that are going to read the letter is probably going to understand it properly. I grew up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Jeddah is a place where the middle and low classes of people live, a place where all the people know each other, communicate with each other, and respect each other although we were from different countries and from different classes. This diversity is as a result of Jeddah being the closest city to Makkah, the most important spot in the kingdom. So, we were really united because we are just

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neighbors. In my neighborhood that I grew in you can see a lot of people from different countries, with different languages. You can see Saudis, Indians, Bangladesh, Sudani, Egyptians, Nigerians, Chadians, Tunisiens, and Moroccans people lives in one big neighborhood and interact with each other. That is, within my group that I used to hang out with, there were a lot of Saudis, Nigerians, Tchady, and Indian people, all of them speaks Arabic. You can observe the difference of their accent, and vocabulary from one to another. However, they go to the same school as we do since they speak Arabic. The people that dont speak Arabic as a first language, like Indians, ma y find Arabic difficult to learn. But still, they can be a great Arabic literates. And since some Indians looks just like some Saudis, we can tell the difference once one begins to speak. However, with all of the different accent and different vocabulary, we still respect them, and respect the way they speak. Eventually, I think that the way some of the Nigerians speak Arabic is beginning to become a very common way to speak Arabic, just like the way with Ebonics in English, and it could get as controversy as the case with Ebonics in English. Also, in my neighborhood, and since all the people is from the middle and low classes, we follow our parents with that way of respecting the poorer people, and even help them. That way, we were a neighborhood that didnt care about money as much as we care about having friends and having fun. I believe that the reason behind being my neighborhood significant than others is because the life in my neighborhood is so simple, and its for who asks for it. For instance, By finding a spot for you in my neighborhood, you are certainly looking for a simple house, car, etc.a simple life. Also, people from another cities view Jeddah as if it was Paris in France, or New York in the U.S. As for me, I really like to speak just like my friends when I talk to them.

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That kind of Arabic me and my friends use to speak with each other is different from the Arabic I grew up with, and even different from the standard Arabic. Specifically, the standard Arabic is known by the Arabic that God used in the holy Quran. The people that used to live in that era when our prophet Mohammad used to get the words of God (Quran) actually speaks Arabic just as the holy Quran does, and that was before 1432 years. During these 1432 years, the Arabic language has gone through a lot of changes. Those changes occurred in many aspects of the Arabic language like the font of writing, the vocabulary, and the way of speaking. First, the font that the people used in the past was totally different from the font we use nowadays. That is, we have a copies of the holy Quran and copies of the prophet's sayings in papers written about a thousand years ago, and not many people can read this writings. Secondly, the vocabularies we use nowadays are also different from the vocabulary the used in the past. That is, if we tried to read a poem in Arabic, a poem from what we call it the early Islamic era a thousand years ago, no one can understand that poem but the Arabic literate people. So, the vocabulary we use nowadays are more likely to be synonyms of the vocabulary they used in the past. Finally, the way we speak today is of course different since we use a different vocabulary from the past. So, how could that be different and it is only the vocabulary? Well, that is because and Ill bit that in any language, there are a word and it synonyms, and of course there is one of the word and it synonyms that are considered to be stronger in meaning and expression. So, in the past, they always use the strong synonyms of a word. Therefore, nowadays we prefer to use that kind of vocabulary when presenting or writing an official letter of doing an interview because we know that this kind of vocabulary is the write ones to leave a good impression and to

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make sure that the reader and the listener completely understand what you mean. That is what we call it a standard Arabic. However, the Arabic that I grew up with is the Arabic that all the Saudi people use as a language. The Arabic that I use in my home to talk to my parents, grandfather and mother, uncles, and teachers is different from the standard Arabic because it uses different word; however, the same grammar is still used for both. So, this kind of Arabic is the second form of Arabic after the standard one. In contrast, the Arabic that I like to speak with my friends is totally different from the two Arabics, the standard, and my home Arabic. That kind of Arabic in different from the standard and my home Arabic because it uses vocabulary that are not Arabic or considered to be synonyms of Arabic words, and it does not follows the Arabic grammar. This is true in the area, where I am from. However, the young peoples language is influenced by their home language. Therefore, the adults language tend to be influenced more by the outside forces that changes language. Even though my parents respect the people that speak Arabic in the new way, they seem to excuse them for that. But in my case, I find it cool to speak like the others in my group does, which is not the standard Arabic, although I know how to speak the standard Arabic and my home Arabic. However, I cant use that language in my home or to speak to anyone other than my friends because my parents will not excuse me for that, saying that my friends speak that kind of Arabic because their first language influenced them to speak that way. So, it is considered somehow a language used by uneducated individuals since just the low class of people speaks it. By those people, I mean the people that come to Saudi Arabia to educate and to find job opportunities. Their job opportunities are wide ranged. It depends on the education they have been through. These people are considered

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low class because they are always on or below the average of a Saudi income. Thats why they move to Saudi Arabia in the first place, to find education and job opportunities. About my transition to English, I started learning English for 10 years. At the beginning, I learned the alphabets and a view words. Then, I was beginning to develop my grammar in English. It was too hard for me to write and read English academically. It was a problem that I didnt fix until last year, when I started to take English courses as in a college level. When I started to learn English at school, almost nine years ago, I noticed that my listening and speaking was very poor. So, I was thinking of a way to improve my listening and speaking, and I figured that listening to English music and reading the lyrics will be sufficient. Therefore, when I listen to an American song, I see how Americans pronounce this letter and this word, and I even enlarge my bank of vocabulary. So, when I listen to another song, I dont even need the lyrics any more to understand what the singer is saying. Even when I speak with someone, I understand him completely. But, in the case of many other people, they may have a good bank of vocabulary, and know how to write and read English but cant speak with other people because they only know how the word looks but not how it pronounced. That was my way to improve my listening and speaking. My writing and reading was really poor even then. I wasnt up to read a whole page in a website in English. I though it wasnt necessary to improve your writing and reading if you know how to speak and interact with others. Well, I was wrong. Writing and reading are important aspects of the language too. I didnt figure that I was wrong until I knew that I need to know how to read and write academically to participate in college. I was studying and preparing to my college in ARAMCO. I learned a great deal of English in that place.

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When I participated in ARAMCO, I figured out that even my speaking and listening, that Ive been working on my whole life in school, was very poor because they didnt fill us with challenging speaking and listening assignments in school. I faced a lot of challenges in a tenmonth's period, and I had to succeed in all of them to earn my scholarship to the U.S. I had to take a lot of graded writing assignments. I had to write 3 to 5 essays every day. Those essays must be written academically. Meaning, those essays must be written using the academic vocabulary, and using the academic approach of writing. I once took a low grade in my 350 words essay just because I wrote an academic word twice in the essay. On the other hand, we had to go through a lot of reading assignments too during the class, and take a quiz on what we did read. And, that reading quizzes was anything but easy. I had to read a whole article in 10 minutes, and answer 15-25 questions on the other 10 minutes, and you cant answer any question if you didnt understand the article completely because the question will be paraphrased and the answer is not written in the article, the answer you should come up with once you understand the whole article. In the case of my speaking, ARAMCO didnt actually focus on the speaking as much as they focused on the reading and writing because they assumed that everyone can speak, and that your speaking is improving while you just interact with the teacher and understand what he is saying in the class. But, we did go through some speaking. I had to take quizzes, which is IELTS exam type. In the quiz, there are three sections. First, you are asked by the examiner some questions and you have to understand it and answer with short answers. In the second section, youre given a topic to talk about in 5 minutes. The examiner in these five minutes will see if you covered the main points of your topic while speaking, and if you can speak without

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stopping to think of what are you trying to say. Lastly, the listening part was an important and easy part for me. They usually give us recordings to listen to while answering some questions about the recordings. The toughest part in such listening exams is that you have to focus on two things in one time, the recording, and the questions. We had to take all this courses in ARAMCO just to pass the IELTS exam with a high grade as a final exam for ARAMCO English courses. I scored 6.5 out of 9.0 in that test and earned my scholarship. After I graduated from ARAMCO, there is no doubt any more that I am a good English speaker, writer, reader, and listener. There is no doubt that I will face no problem in my college because of my English. And, there is no doubt that that much of English I went through affected my Arabic somehow. These statements tells me that learn a language, you must learn its literacy. As I mentioned earlier, we Arabs dont speak the standard Arabic any more. Once, my cousin went to Canada for engineering major. He spent about a whole year in Canada before he came back to his family to Saudi Arabia for a vacation. He didnt interact with anyone but Canadians and non-Arabic speakers. So, he came to speak to us with some standard Arabic in his vocabulary. We were surprised and laughing. I believe that he didnt use the word that he wanted to say, and we say, for a long time that he forgot how to say it. So, unconsciously he relied on the standard Arabic to say what he was trying to say. I noticed that the same happens to me but with a different way. I notice that when I am speaking with my friends, I speak Arabic and English at the same time. I use the Arabic vocabulary and grammar but I throw some English vocabulary. That

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happens with a lot of people and I can explain the reason. When people speak generally, we always talk the same regarding what are we talking about. Lets say were talking about the weather for instance, when I talk about the weather for a whole year in English with my American friend and then go back to Saudi Arabia to talk about the weather with my Saudi friend, of course I am going to throw some English words to my Saudi friend like storm, rain, etc. All in all, when I look to the way I speak, I dont speak like my family speak because I like to speak like my Tchady friend speak. And, I even throw some English words in my speech while speaking Arabic. So, should I call the way I speak Arabic, English, or Tchady language? I believe that everyone speak his own language in the world. And for us to speak and interact with each other, we need to understand our language. I may have a friend that doesn't speak English at all. But, when I throw some English words in our speech, he understands what I am saying. That is my own languagethats how I describe it. Lastly, this is not the point where my literacy take its last form. My literacy will keep changing as I keep exposing to other languages and I am pretty sure yours will too.