Cover Letter for WLLN
My WLLN moment is my accent and how it has been a hard part of my identity and how I see myself as I continue to grow older. So, with this essay I chose to have the audience of my essay is people who either have strong accents or try to speak with people who just don’t understand them. I just chose to have it be tailored to them so that they can understand how I felt during the many of moments that I clearly explain. With this being the key audience, I try to tailor the language and rhetorical choices by having dialogue to have the reader understand how I could’ve felt during the time. I also chose to have people’s faces and facial expressions to be heavily shown. It helps the reader picture what their faces look like as they look at me weird when I speak to them. I wanted to do it this way so this can be appealing to them on how they see the cause and effect of the things going on.
Some meaningful insights I had gained from this Phase and writing this assignment is about how much I have grown in the way I see myself and how I push to have this enormous amount of confidence in the way I speak and present myself. This also gave me a meaningful insight on how to make a short page summary become longer by stretching out sentences. This gives heavier details on the story and leads to having my essay be more descriptive to the reader. Thus leading to have me be more open when trying to dig deeper into my literacy moment.
Concepts/terms that have most impacted my learning and my writing practices is trying to push myself to use less “I” and change those sentences to be more descriptive. This was a hard turn but I eventually pushed through and fixed around my essay. I was also impacted by creating the purpose and audience because I had to find a way to talk about my challenging moment in school and dealing with my accent and make it relatable and known to the audience. I had to also try to use descriptions in order to give context on what is happening in school before I go on to talk about how I changed and began to be proud of myself. So, these new concepts/terms have made me reflect on how I can continue to improve my writing in this course with each assignment.
In Phase 1, the WLLN assignment has helped me achieve new things in my writing and how I can reflect on how I write. One of these things that I achieved is developing different strategies on how I can read, draft, collaborate, revise, and edit. I learned that I should do a l layout of how my essay should be before I even get started with writing the essay. I learned a lot of this by discussions talked about in-class and how I can brainstorm many ideas of what was important to me and how it has affected me in my life. Drafting was also important on how it helped me focus on the main topics that I wanted to discuss rather many different points. It adds another element to having organization of what my essay can become. Having workshop in class helped me get hands-on thoughts on what I should do to make my essay better and be more appealing to the eye and easy to follow. With the help of collaborating in class, revising was made easier and didn’t take long as it helped with making my organization better. So, with this assignment I was able to achieve new things and continue to use these things in my writing later on.
WLLN Essay
One of my literacy moments that I have been through is when I was 6 years old. I had my first day of school in my elementary school, I was finally a first grader. I was so excited but so nervous since I’m so quiet and to myself. Growing up I was always this way because new people and new areas made me feel very vulnerable. However, but today I felt different, I felt like it was time to change this and finally make some friends. I had friends at my daycare well, I think. But first grade is different than daycare. The kids are different the school is a whole bigger and you could almost get lost is all the different rooms and floors. When I walked to the classroom, I wasn’t alone. My mom was there to help my worries go away and it made me so happy. We finally arrive to the front of the classroom and all I smell was crayons, glue, and construction paper. I was so excited for the activities that we were going to do but a part of me was so nervous for making friends. Before my mom left, she looked at me and said, “It’s okay. You will be fine and at the end of the day I will be waiting for you to tell me about your day”. I gave her a big hug and kiss and ran into the classroom to take a seat.
Finally, when the students all arrived that’s is when class was going to begin. We had to do the typical icebreaker, say your name and what you like to do for fun. Everyone said what their name was and what they liked, and I was happy that people liked the same thing as me. Soon enough it was my turn to speak in front the class. I was so nervous, but I told myself that everything was going to be fine. I told the class “My name is Jenelle and I like to run”. In my head I was criticizing myself like “who says that? People won’t understand that I like to play TAG or run on the tracks with my siblings”. When I stopped being so self-critical, I looked up at everyone and I notice that they were looking at me weird. I was so confused why everyone was staring at me, it made me feel self-conscious and feel like I did something wrong. That was all I could think about while in class.
After the first part of the day, we finally arrived to have lunch and I was determined to finally put my plan into action. The lunch of the day was French fries and burgers. I got my food and was nervous but ecstatic. So, I hurried and walked to a small table in the cafeteria. That’s when I see a small light skin boy sitting down. Maybe he is waiting for his friend to come and sit with him, I thought. But I decided to talk to the boy anyways and push past my fears. I then walk up to him and asked if I could sit with him. He looked at me with a funny face like I told him something so weird. It was the same face that everyone in the class looked at me when we introduced ourselves. I didn’t get it. How come every time I open my mouth and say something, I get a weird face. That’s when he moved away from me and left an empty space at the table. I continued to ask myself, “What is wrong with me?” or “Did I say the wrong thing?”. I never felt so confused about something before and I’m 6 years old at the time. I just continued to eat my lunch in silence and all alone. It was the only thing I could do since no one would talk to me.
Finally. My favorite part of the day arrived. Recess. This was my last chance to have a friend at my new school. When all the kids go outside, I’m immediately overwhelmed. Kids running around, playing, screaming, everything and I couldn’t take it. There were just too many things going on. I couldn’t keep up with it. I put my anxiety aside and scanned the whole play area. I saw kids playing on the swings. I saw people playing TAG. I saw kids on the slides, literally everyone. But I finally decided to walk up to these 2 little girls that were about to start playing a game of TAG. I love TAG. I love to run. Perfect, easy way for a friendship to begin to bloom. I finally got the courage to walk up to them and asked if I can play TAG with them. But all I saw was the same old face that everyone gave me all day. I don’t get it. I just thought that it wasn’t meant for me to have friends at this school. At this point, I really had given up on everything and making friends. I had fully accepted that this was my life and that I will just be by myself at school. That’s when one of the girl’s spoke to me and said, “What is wrong with the way you speak?”. All I could do was look at her confused. That’s when the other girl said “Yeah, you talk really funny. Your words don’t sound the same as mine do.” That’s when I realized that everyone was looking at me funny because of my Caribbean accent. All because of the way I say certain words. I never thought it was so serious. All the kids at my other school thought it was cool that I spoke like this and always asked me to say all kinds of things. Plus, the kids in my old school had accents like me so I just didn’t get it. Why was it such a big deal? Why did they see me like I was so different? I just walked away so they couldn’t see my tears. I just sat by the stairs looking out the fence and all the trees. Once we all went back to the class, I didn’t speak for the rest of the day. I was just quiet and didn’t engage with anything that was going on in the classroom. I then noticed that the same little girls who criticized my accent are my classmates. It was so awkward and embarrassing. I hated it so much. They made me feel so vulnerable and feel so alone. I couldn’t wait when my mother would finally pick me up from this terrible school.
It was the end of the day and I just wanted to go home so bad. This day was terrible, and I was glad that it was finally over. We all lined up to go outside and I spotted my mother immediately. I ran to her so fast and never let go. I never wanted to let her, I almost started crying. She asked me “what is the matter?” I just didn’t say anything to her because I was so upset at what was going on. So, she lifted me up and carried me in her arms and walked all the way home. My school wasn’t far, so this wasn’t a problem for her at all. When we reached to the front of the apartment, she put me down and kissed my forehead and opened the door. My safe place, my home. The place where no one would ever make fun of me for what I say or do. I was safe from being a loser. I quickly put my bag down and washed my hands. I ran to my room to my older brother and sister and we talked, and they played with me before it was time to do my homework for school. I was not ready to go back to that school, but I have no choice.
I’m Haitian and grew up with a mother who has a strong accent, it’s not strong anymore now, so naturally I say things exactly like her. I felt hurt. I thought it was fine. I didn’t think anything was wrong with the way I spoke. This was a day that I felt like a loser and a laughingstock for the way I spoke when it was never my intention. Who would’ve thought that people wouldn’t want to be my friend all because of my voice and the way I say words? People never laughed at my mom when she spoke, so why am I being laughed at? I just couldn’t get over it. My siblings don’t have an accent so why do I? I just wanted friends so I wouldn’t be lonely and can play with them during recess. I was scared to tell my mom what the kids did to me. I don’t want her to know that her little baby was laughed at by kids. I didn’t want her to worry about me, as long as I don’t speak, I would be fine. Now all I have to think about is how I’m going to change my accent and be able to not have this accent. But I wouldn’t even know the first thing that comes to changing the way one says different words. It was a hard mission but I was determined to figure out how I was going to do this to get the kids at school to like me.
Then the time came that I had to tell my mom what had happened to me at school after a week of the bullying. I finally confronted her after school and told her, “The kids make fun of me because of the way I talk”. I looked her with saddened eyes, I hoped that she would give me some comfort and help me finally get friends. She told me, “The way you speak is fine, all you have to do is change the way certain words sound. Your brain is powerful, you soon will be able to speak more than 1 languages if you keep trying.” From then on, I went home and asked my siblings if they could help me pronouncing words clearer and better for people to understand me. Sooner than later, I finally was able to speak with having most of my words not have an accent along with it. I was finally able to get friends, no one would laugh at me anymore. No more weird faces and moving away from me like I’m weird. I was finally able to get more confidence in myself and learn that my accent is who I am and I shouldn’t have to be ashamed of it. Thus, it gave me the ability to code-switch and use my accent with family and close friends and no accent with everyone else.
