Question

This is a student essay with paragraphs that have been placed out of order. Rearrange the paragraphs into an order that seems logical to you.

A

At a young age, I knew I had to get a good grip on the English language, both on paper and verbally. My parents had it rough trying to find work and getting through school. I saw them struggle so much trying to communicate to the world. English, through my eyes, became this elite world I so badly wanted to be a part of. I was excited to finally understand the language fluently and I was proud to be able to compose summaries and essays throughout grade school. In high school though, I encountered a series of new frustrations with English grammar. Some teachers were lenient but for the most part a lot of my teachers had zero tolerance for grammatical errors. It was incredibly frustrating when I would receive a graded paper back with a less than deserving grade and annoying annotations. This was the result of me not placing appropriate apostrophes or mistakenly used their in place of there. I always wanted to ask my teachers why they couldn’t cut me some slack. If I was a competent student and you knew my intentions, why must I settle for that grade when you were able to follow along and understand me in the assignment?

B

I am a first-generation college student. My parents are refugees from Cambodia and they came to the U.S. when they were about 10 or 11 years old. Our native language is Khmer. In our language, subjunctives do not exist. It was something that was really hard to acclimate to when I started to learn English. Though I was born here, I always spoke my language at home and did not pick up English until I was around 6 years old. In my language there is only what is and what is not. Any kind of wishful thinking or possible outcomes just don’t exist. I struggled learning English but eventually got through it. I was about 9 years old when I finally was able to kick my accent. Boy was I relieved that the teasing was finally going to stop. I felt confident. I felt like I had mastered my second language. But I was wrong. I’m going to share with you my reflection on the subject of the English language, through my experiences.

C

I have learned to embrace all of my grammatical mistakes. I even started to humor my occasional broken English. It is inevitable and I take a lesson from it every time. At the end of the day, what’s important is that we are able to produce a proper paper, right? An articulate paper despite having all these different avenues we can use to communicate English. In a TED Talk titled, “3 Ways to Speak English,” Jamila Lyiscott speaks out poetically about the several ways she speaks English in her community. She talks about the challenges of speaking several completely different styles of English between her friends, her parents and in a classroom setting. A line from her speech that really resonated with me was when she said, “I know I had to borrow your language because mine was stolen, but you can’t expect me to speak ‘your’ history wholly while mine was broken.” How beautiful and powerful is that? As a first-generation student, I really want to make my family proud. Hearing Jamila’s TED Talk gave me a sense of confidence and reassurance in some way. She is letting us know that it is ok to switch things up with your vocabulary. It’s ok to dab in and out of the social norms of English to make sense of the message that you are trying to relay to people on a day to day basis. Just so long as you know the rules and you know when it’s ok to break them. That’s what will set you apart, and that is what will make you articulate.

D

I felt incredibly defeated and thought no way is this fair. Throughout school we’d often get assigned into group projects where we needed to combine all of our research and opinions into a summary. I remember correcting my classmate’s grammar and calling them out for a misspelled word. Where this comma or that apostrophe should or should not go, what needs to be capitalized. I remember coming home and boasting to my mom about these scenarios and one day she said to me, “If you were able to understand what your friends in class are trying to describe, why are you having to tell them that they are wrong?” And in that exact moment, I came to realize that I was a huge hypocrite. Why didn’t I choose to be a little more patient and try to comprehend my classmates? It was then that I realized, it doesn’t matter how we speak or if English was your second language. On paper, there are rules to live up to that everyone should follow because it really is for our own good. A couple weeks ago in class, we read an article called “Opinion Piece on Grammatical Correctness” by Ursula K. Le Guin (33). There was a piece from the reading where she says, “How we talk is important to us all, and we’re all shamed when told in public that we don’t talk correctly. Shame can paralyze our minds.”

E

Her article took me right down memory lane and I started to recall my own journey through the strange world of the English language. From when I was a child, to an adolescent, to an adult. I started to see that there are actually different ways I had to use English. So many ways we had to change things up to make sense of something in whatever social setting we were in.

For school, for work, for our family and for our friends. We even use an entirely different vocabulary for each. To be honest, I was so caught up in learning English, I forgot how to read and write in my own native language. I was no longer able to truly proclaim myself as being bilingual. I became choppy in my first language and started speaking it horribly. So, I enrolled in a Khmer class to freshen up and re learned everything. In the process of that, I came across all these wonderful students from all walks of life. Some were like me and some were learning for the first time. The interactions we had showed me the versatility of language and how we personalize it to communicate and make sense to each other. We must grow and elevate ourselves into your fullest potential. Even if you have to get through the process by speaking a little broken English. Progress is progress no matter what stage you’re in.

Answer 1

The correct logical order is the following I think

B

I am a first-generation college student. My parents are refugees from Cambodia and they came to the U.S. when they were about 10 or 11 years old. Our native language is Khmer. In our language, subjunctives do not exist. It was something that was really hard to acclimate to when I started to learn English. Though I was born here, I always spoke my language at home and did not pick up English until I was around 6 years old. In my language there is only what is and what is not. Any kind of wishful thinking or possible outcomes just don’t exist. I struggled learning English but eventually got through it. I was about 9 years old when I finally was able to kick my accent. Boy was I relieved that the teasing was finally going to stop. I felt confident. I felt like I had mastered my second language. But I was wrong. I’m going to share with you my reflection on the subject of the English language, through my experiences.

A

At a young age, I knew I had to get a good grip on the English language, both on paper and verbally. My parents had it rough trying to find work and getting through school. I saw them struggle so much trying to communicate to the world. English, through my eyes, became this elite world I so badly wanted to be a part of. I was excited to finally understand the language fluently and I was proud to be able to compose summaries and essays throughout grade school. In high school though, I encountered a series of new frustrations with English grammar. Some teachers were lenient but for the most part a lot of my teachers had zero tolerance for grammatical errors. It was incredibly frustrating when I would receive a graded paper back with a less than deserving grade and annoying annotations. This was the result of me not placing appropriate apostrophes or mistakenly used their in place of there. I always wanted to ask my teachers why they couldn’t cut me some slack. If I was a competent student and you knew my intentions, why must I settle for that grade when you were able to follow along and understand me in the assignment?

D

I felt incredibly defeated and thought no way is this fair. Throughout school we’d often get assigned into group projects where we needed to combine all of our research and opinions into a summary. I remember correcting my classmate’s grammar and calling them out for a misspelled word. Where this comma or that apostrophe should or should not go, what needs to be capitalized. I remember coming home and boasting to my mom about these scenarios and one day she said to me, “If you were able to understand what your friends in class are trying to describe, why are you having to tell them that they are wrong?” And in that exact moment, I came to realize that I was a huge hypocrite. Why didn’t I choose to be a little more patient and try to comprehend my classmates? It was then that I realized, it doesn’t matter how we speak or if English was your second language. On paper, there are rules to live up to that everyone should follow because it really is for our own good. A couple weeks ago in class, we read an article called “Opinion Piece on Grammatical Correctness” by Ursula K. Le Guin (33). There was a piece from the reading where she says, “How we talk is important to us all, and we’re all shamed when told in public that we don’t talk correctly. Shame can paralyze our minds.”

C

I have learned to embrace all of my grammatical mistakes. I even started to humor my occasional broken English. It is inevitable and I take a lesson from it every time. At the end of the day, what’s important is that we are able to produce a proper paper, right? An articulate paper despite having all these different avenues we can use to communicate English. In a TED Talk titled, “3 Ways to Speak English,” Jamila Lyiscott speaks out poetically about the several ways she speaks English in her community. She talks about the challenges of speaking several completely different styles of English between her friends, her parents and in a classroom setting. A line from her speech that really resonated with me was when she said, “I know I had to borrow your language because mine was stolen, but you can’t expect me to speak ‘your’ history wholly while mine was broken.” How beautiful and powerful is that? As a first-generation student, I really want to make my family proud. Hearing Jamila’s TED Talk gave me a sense of confidence and reassurance in some way. She is letting us know that it is ok to switch things up with your vocabulary. It’s ok to dab in and out of the social norms of English to make sense of the message that you are trying to relay to people on a day to day basis. Just so long as you know the rules and you know when it’s ok to break them. That’s what will set you apart, and that is what will make you articulate.

E

Her article took me right down memory lane and I started to recall my own journey through the strange world of the English language. From when I was a child, to an adolescent, to an adult. I started to see that there are actually different ways I had to use English. So many ways we had to change things up to make sense of something in whatever social setting we were in. For school, for work, for our family and for our friends. We even use an entirely different vocabulary for each. To be honest, I was so caught up in learning English, I forgot how to read and write in my own native language. I was no longer able to truly proclaim myself as being bilingual. I became choppy in my first language and started speaking it horribly. So, I enrolled in a Khmer class to freshen up and re learned everything. In the process of that, I came across all these wonderful students from all walks of life. Some were like me and some were learning for the first time. The interactions we had showed me the versatility of language and how we personalize it to communicate and make sense to each other. We must grow and elevate ourselves into your fullest potential. Even if you have to get through the process by speaking a little broken English. Progress is progress no matter what stage you’re in.