ID2800 WRITING

Prof. Allison Edgley

Reflection Essay
Maggie (Chen Manqi) 7/15/2014
Learning English
We have already finished reading three essays Mother Tongue, Persian,
English, and Learning to Read and Write. According to the description of learning
English, these three essays wake up my thoughts of my own experience. Besides, the
harmonious or contentious connections among them, they bring me reflections and
enlightenment about the origins, motivations, and outcomes of my experience
learning English.
First, while facing why we start learning English, three authors show different
answers in each essay. Amy Tan learns English because of her emigration; Jasmin
Darznik, as similar as Tan, learns English because her living surroundings changed;
however, Frederick Douglass start learning English and pursued things, such as
education, that a slave could not obtain. Based on their experiences, and compared to
the young Chinese, I have to say our reasons to start learning English are simple,
because of the lack of pressure and lack of self-knowledge. Why do we start learning
English? I have never thought of this question before, even I learning English for
almost 10 years. Our surroundings are not severely stressful, when government and
family require us to learn English, then we start. No more self-knowledge and no
more pressure, which cause our beginnings to differentiate and cause further
differences.
Secondly, regarding what makes us work really hard on English, three authors
also give different answers. A feeling of shame is showed in both Tans and Darzniks
experiences, because of their mothers who have limited English; and the unsatisfied
feeling towards slave life and the aspiration of something brilliant still became
Douglasss motivation. Then as for us, because of the lack of pressure, we seldom try
our best to learn English; the common power to push us to work hard is just the
grades. However, my thoughts changed because of the enlightenment of their
experience we should have more initiative and always ask ourselves should we
work hard? Even if the surroundings are limited, and we cannot get pressure from
outside, we can still dig it out by ourselves or from ourselves. Now, I feel shameful
about my low English level, but I believe it can be my motivation to push me to work
hard.
Last but not least, there is a common point connecting those three essays the
authors all have achieved great outcomes of learning English. Tan, a workaholic, pays
more attention to English literature while she is not a scholar. Additionally, Darznik
has had the ability to explore her Iranian cultural heritage by using English. As for
Douglass, he had put an end to his slave life and has won a brighter future, and his
success can be attributed to his great English. Based on such achievements those
authors have earned, it is obvious that we still have a long way to go. The inspiration
has come out. Success is always shining, and how to get success really depends on us.
In conclusion, all the parts above focus on the connection among the three essays
and some comparisons which bring me thoughts about origins, motivations, and
outcomes of learning English. In those three essays, there are different answers
towards why we study English and what makes us work really hard on English.
Besides, nowadays, the three authors English levels show their outcome of learning
English. I started to think about something that we can do now. According to their
experience, we can say, there is no barrier to learning English. Nothing is impossible,
yet it just totally depends on us.

References

Darznik. J. (2014). Persian, English. In L. G. Kirszner & S. R. Mandell (Eds.),
The Blair reader (pp. 140-143). New York, NY: Pearson.

Douglass, F. (2014). Learning to Read and Write. In L. G. Kirszner & S. R. Mandell
(Eds.), The Blair reader (pp. 143-148). New York, NY: Pearson.

Tan, A. (2014). Mother tongue. In L. G. Kirszner & S. R. Mandell (Eds.), The Blair
reader (pp. 134-139). New York, NY: Pearson.