Samuel Filpo’s Cover Letter:

Who are we now and who will we be? This assignment gave me perspective. It allowed me to look at myself, at my past self, and at my language. It reminded me that unlike bottles we don’t have caps that prevent our knowledge from developing. It is a sad thing to believe you know it all. In believing this, we are also believing that we have reached our limit, when in reality we can all keep on improving. This assignment was really valuable since it inspired me to care about my linguistic level by reminding me that I can always improve my language. The assignment reminded me of this because it forced me to look back at a moment in which I was lacking linguistic abilities and post this it made me look into the future and create an experience in which I will be improved and have the skills I was lacking from my past experience. While making me look into the future this assignment allowed me to set a goal for myself, since now I know that our languages keep on developing and that I have in fact done it before, so why not again?

For this assignment, my goal was to reach out to the people who feel stuck and embarrassed of their linguistic and literacy skills. I wanted to attract the people who, just as I did, aren’t only embarrassed and insecure about their language but believe that they can no longer improve. I appealed to my audience by using an experience that made me vulnerable in order to make myself relatable to them. I mentioned an experience in which I felt what all of us as humans are victims of, fear. I made myself vulnerable and expressed to them what I felt during my experience,“The fear of being judged by the audience or forgetting your words was much more terrifying than I imagined.”  By including my emotions in my essay I showed my audience that I too was like them. Then, by looking into the future and setting an expectation for myself I attempted to give them hope and to make them dream the same way I am doing now.I attempted to make them dream of a day in which they will be comfortable with their language.

The term that has greatly impacted my learning and writing practices the most would have to be purpose. “To make someone believe something you must believe it yourself”. This is something my instructor,  S.E Hamlet mentioned in the first week of class and that now will stick with me. When writing a text or speaking to an audience we must always have a purpose,a goal to achieve, and a message to get across the audience. However, we can’t persuade or convince our audience of something we aren’t passionate about. After understanding this concept my main goal when I write is to write about something I am passionate about, to write about something I believe in, and to write with purpose or not write at all.

This phase’s assignment allowed me to recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering, oppressing, and hierarchizing languages and their users, and be open to communicating across different languages and cultures. It did this because it showed me how important anyone’s language is. It made me realise that we all start somewhere so we should all be open to listen to others no matter what their linguistic level is; since after all, we can all improve ourselves which is the beauty of our minds.

Samuel Filpo

ENG110

S.E HAMLET

WRITTEN LANGUAGE AND LITERACY NARRATIVE

9/10/2021

        My First Taste of Bad Medicine 

Regardless if it is because of our ethnic backgrounds, our cultures, or our experiences, as humans we are destined to be different from one another. However, one of the things we have in common is that we each have a means of communication. Whether it is sign language,Mandarin, our mannerisms, or “Standard English”, each and everyone of us has a language through which they can communicate and portray their ideas and messages to others.

We don’t always remember when or how we specifically learned a language.Some of us learned it through social experiences,  by watching tv-shows, or with the help of their family members. Whichever way we may have learned the language and literacy we use in our everyday lives, our life-long linguistic and literacy careers are constantly being developed and upgraded. June Jordan mentions this exact continuum in her essay[1] “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the Future Life of Willie Jordan” when she makes the following claim,“Obviously, numerous forms of English now operate inside a natural, uncontrollable, continuum of development.”. Our language and literacy continues to advance and develop everyday through certain events, occasions, and experiences we go through. These experiences might sometimes be embarrassing and portray negative emotions but in the end they encourage and motivate us to improve both our language and literacy.

I myself had this experience not too long ago. It was two semesters back when I was taking arguably the most challenging course I’ve taken in my academic career, Speech. We had our first class virtually, apart from it being virtual, it was a normal first day where we introduced ourselves and listened to the syllabus. The teacher explained that we’d have to present 3 different speeches throughout the semester. While presenting the syllabus my teacher told the class that public speaking is America’s most common fear, and that most people would rather die than to perform a speech in front of a large group of people. [2]

[ According to Richard. I. Garber, this graph was published by the American Demographics Magazine in October 1997. The graph effectively shows that public speaking is America’s number 1 fear surpassing even the fear of one’s own death]

  My friends and I found it shocking that public speaking was that scary to so many people since it was something we did daily just in front of a large audience. However, as time passed and our first assignment to perform a speech was approaching, I began to understand this fear more and more.The fear of being judged by the audience or forgetting your words was much more terrifying than I imagined. While performing the speech, both my hands and voice were shaking. This experience made me realize that something I do in my everyday-life is more challenging than I thought. Even after practicing for hours with my friends, the level of my language wasn’t advanced enough to allow me to perform a speech. This experience served like bad medicine. While it was embarrassing, it motivated me to keep on developing and working on my language to a point where I am confident enough in my skills to be successful at public speaking. 

[Photos of me and my friend Kenny who is also in this class, practicing for our speech almost a year ago.] 

Ten years from now, I will be wearing a black suit while holding a glass of champagne. I will be able to stand on a chair and give the perfect best man speech at my friend’s wedding. [3]I will stand firm and make no mistakes as I  quote Dr.Seuss “We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we team up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”. As I finish my speech and hear the audience clap I will think back to this moment where I am still nervous but confident that this class will give me all I need to perfect my Language and Literacy.

WORK CITED PAGE:

[1]-   June Jordan, 1985. “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the Future Life of Willie Jordan” when she makes the following claim,“Obviously, numerous forms of English now operate inside a natural, uncontrollable, continuum of development.” ENGLISH 110 Fall 2020”

     “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the Future Life of Willie Jordan” https://eng110harrison.commons.gc.cuny.edu/content/june_jordan/

[2]- Image

Richard I. Garber, July 3rd, 2011 “More Americans fear public speaking than getting fat, and death tied for third” http://joyfulpublicspeaking.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-americans-fear-public-speaking.html

graph: October of 1997

[3]- Robert Fulghum, “We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we team up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

“True Love: Stories Told To and By Robert Fulghum” in a section called “Perspective”.  January  27th, 1997, no link it is a book