Do you think Jean Anyon's essay still holds merit today?

Digiannia Arbelaez
Professor Young
English 1100
September 24/2015

Such a Sad Reality

Fairleigh Dickinson University: $57,000.00

The idea that Jean Anyon brings to us is not the regular submissive idea of the educational system that is brought to us by all other mediums. Jean Anyon states that your quality of education depends on your economic class. It is sad and hard to admit that she is right, the way the poor are treated in this world is very different then the way the rich are treated, and this goes for educational purposes as well. The rich are taught to be creative, to generate and produce the next big thing, to have and hold power; while the poor are forced to follow orders and rules, they are taught to be good workers. The depressive part of this is the fact that this idea of this educational system is still relevant today, that we as a society follow this guidelines without even noticing it and that to a certain extend we are just generating “cheerful robots” and “successful owners”. “Work hard, because if you work hard you will get what you want” What I want is not to stay at the bottom, everyone wants to be successful and have money but that is not what we are all programmed to do.

Normal Superior de Envigado(Colombia): $0

The opportunities presented to the lower and middle class do not minimally compare to the opportunities that are offered to the upper class. Those with money have the resources to get the research and materials to make and create what will later on bring them profit, because that is what they are taught and given in schools. While the poor have outdated textbooks and old computers, the rich are filled with tons of luxurious “state of art” that gives them the space to make mistakes and start over again. “Sit down and shut up” “follow the rules” “Obey what you are told” Doctrines that are set on stone for those who do not have the opportunity to “ask questions” like the fortunate do. When you grow up surrounded with opportunities you are not expected to do anything less. Your father is a doctor? Well you should be a surgeon or at least a doctor like him. While growing up surrounded with difficulties might only bring you dreams and hopes as your career goals. Just how it was doing it back in 1980 as Jean Anyon stated the educational system is doing it now, because to my understanding and my own experience not much has changed. 

Public School Vs. Private School

Should inproper English be allowed in an academic setting?

Digiannia Arbelaez
Professor Young
English 1100
09/16/2015

Restricted Thoughts. 

     The freedom of speech is one of the most valuable rights granted to us as thoughtful individuals. Why is it so important to express ourselves as our own personal characters through our words but we are pressured to speak a certain way when we are in an academic setting?. This makes no sense to me, we should be able to express who we are in all aspects in all different types of settings. If a teacher or professor is asking for my opinion on a certain topic, why should I pull back on what I want to say due to the fact that she or he might considered it "inappropriate or nonstandard English"?. There should not be guidelines to my writing, there should not be restrictions to my thoughts. 

    "Do this", "don't do this", "remember this", "don't write like this". I understand there is a certain way writers are supposed to write but why should I be locked in a box when in reality the less rules the farther the mind can go. As a student I want to be guided but also pushed and motivated to be the best that I can be in that specific area being able to show who I am as a person through my work. We should have the right to our own language in an academic setting, it only makes sense to let me be "me" so that as a teacher you are able to get that "masterpiece" that you would not be able to find anywhere else.

Trapped.

Identity

Digiannia Arbelaez Agudelo

Professor Young

English 1100

09/02/2015

"I am Unique, there is noone in this world like me"

We always hear those who are "trying to figure out who they are", saying they are trying to "find their identity", their place in society, their place in the world. Do we ever stop to think what that means, what  identity is and how you gain it? Anzaldua speaks very passionatly about this topic in her writing "How to Tame a Wild Tongue". She strongly believes that language and identity are tied hand in hand and says that the language you speak is a part of you is a part of your roots. Could this be true, could knowing a different language really make us different in certain ways. 

I personally live this reality, because yes, in my opinion Anzaldua is right in every sense. When you grow up speaking a different language in a different country your values and morals are different. This comes to play a role when you are just a baby and you are thought how to speak, and in some way how to think. " So if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language." (pg 2) quote that brings out the truth in the way I feel when one trys to speak badly about my people, my country or my language. I take pride in all those things because to me that is who I am. All of my actions reflect on how I was raised and who I was raised by; so to insult my origen is to insult me as a unique indivdual. The way I portrey myself is how I was thought to show myself to others, therefore everything I do and say shows who I am.

"Colombia tierra querida"

Work Cited

Anzaldua, Gloria."How to Tame a Wild Tongue". Teaching Developmental Writing. Ed. Susan Naomi Berstein. Fourth ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. 245-255. Print.

How to Tame a Wild Tounge

Digiannia Arbelaez Agudelo
Professor Young
English 1100
08/31/2015

"How I speak is who I am"

1. Anzaldua describes the way in which a dentist "is cleaning her roots out" trying to cover a gap of her tooth. Scene that has such great meaning due to the fact that he is trying to take out her values by trying to cover and cut what he calls a wild tounge. A tounge that can not stay still or keep quiet a tounge that refuses to conform to what society is telling her.

2. Throughout the whole story Anzaldua goes back and forth from Spanish to English and English to Spansh and even throws in a lilttle of what it's called Chicano. She does it to make us feel how she feels, and even though it is coherent and it makes sense  her purpose is to make us undertand how being forced to understand a lenguage that is not your lenguange can be distressing

3. Academic English can be defined as standard Spanish and Chicano Spanish can be described as nonstandard English or "slang". Both in Spanish and English there is a proper way you should speak to some due to norms of society (standard Spanish/ academic English) but there is also "Slang" or Chicano in Anzaldua's case. It's own lenguage/dialect that is spoken differently depending of where you are geographically, the people you surround yourself with and even who you are as an individual.

4. As I  said before norms of sociaty tell us what we should and sould not do, and in our society depending the scenario most of the time "Academic English" is a indispensable tool that you have to be able to maneuver to be considered a "smart" character.

5. Some of the different types of English identities that I know and use are proper English, which is the way that I refer to adults and those who have authority over me. Slang, which is the way that I speak to most of my friends and how I express myself through social media, and broken English, which is the way I communicate with my mother, father and most of my family that speak both Spanish and English like me, using "spanglish" a combination of both lenguages and broken words.

6. Usually in a group of friends you tend to have inside jokes and secret codes, so that when you speak about something infront of others they do not understand what you are talking about. In my group of friends we use a very small amount of secret code words, we might have our own "insiders", like a phrase one of as said years ago and we still laugh about it but there is no real secret lenguange.

7. The way you speak should vary depending on where you are and who you are referring to. Usually when I am speaking to an authority figure or I am at a formal place I try to speak as proper as possible, weather it is to give a good impression or because it is what I am suppose to do. When I am with my friends or when I am on social media things tend to change a bit, the "slang" comes out and I tend to not really care about the proper way of speaking.

8. The lenguage you speak relates to who you are as an individual, what your character is and even the way you were raised due to the values that were given to you by your parents due to their lenguage. " I am my lenguage" a phrase I personally feel very identify with, well I am who I am and how I am because I was raised in Colombia by hispanic parents who believe in God and follow his values which have created my morals and is the plataform to the way I see the world and where I stand in it.

9. At the beginning Anzaldua starts her story by using a retorical situation with a dentist and an "infection" that he is trying to take out, a tounge that does not sit still, but at the end it is shown that the chicanos were not willing to give up their lenguage, to let that dentist tame that wild tounge.

10. The lenguage you speak has everything to do with who you are and how you see yourself and others. As I said before and just how Anzaldua said "I am my lenguage"; each lenguage you speak is a a key to a different world, to a different culture and to a different set of morals and values, things that determine who you are as a person.

11. Your identity is the center of your life, it is the plataform of all the things that root from you, it is how you and others see you and who you belive you are. To Anzaldua identity is very important, which is why she refuses to give up her lenguage. Because it is taking away her lenguage is taking away who she is "if a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tounge, she also has a low estimation of me" pg5.

"I have never seen anything as strong or stubborn, he says. And I think, how do you tame a wild tounge, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down?."

"Wild tounges can't be tamed, they can only be cut out."

"Having a big mouth, questioning, carrying tales are all signs of being mal criada"

Cited Work

Anzaldua, Gloria "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" Teaching Developmental Writing. Ed. Susan Naomi Bernstein Fourth ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's 2013. 245-255. Print

Getting to know you

Digannia Arbelaez Agudelo

Professor Young

English 1100

08/26/2015

"Smile, life gets better by the sencond"

Heyyy!

 Yeah thats me... My name is Digiannia Arbelaez Agudelo, but you can call me Digi. I actually have two last names and only one name. That is due to the fact that I am Colombian and in Colombia they give you, your father's last name and your mother's last name. My name is a totally different story it is a combination of two names, Di from the Princess lady Diana and Giannia from Gianni Versace, two recognized public figures that passed away on 1997 and I was born on that same year. To make it easier to understand my mom and dad are very creative and a bit crazy. It's a really strange name I know, and for that same reason Digi is just shorter and better for people to say.

To be honest I believe your name represents who you are, or at least in position it does. I feel if so I am strange and difficult just like my name, in a good way of course. I'm more of an artsy girl than an athlete, I love to sing, dance, act and even paint. Ever since I can remember I would alway say I wanted to be a singer when I grew up, and deep deep inside of me I still think that is what I want. I loved to try out for all the plays and musicals at my schools and in 8th grade even though I was just learning how to speak English I got the lead role for the Beauty and the Beast, as the beauty. When I was in Colombia I joined and created dance groups and even made the choreographies for what ever presentatons we had. This are all different ways in which I could scape reality and go into a world of magic, and that is exactly why I love them. 

 It is not because I am lazy that I don't play sports, trust me I have tried. It is more because I am not that good at them, sports are activities that you have to practice to be good at and I never really stayed with one to practice it enough. I used to swim when I was younger, I loved it but I stopped. Then I went on to trying some sports in high school and one of them was lacrosse, I didn't last long, it was a really hard sport that involved giving a lot of time and dedication when I was doing it just for fun. I also tried cheering for the cheerleading squad at my school my last year of high school, it was a fun experience and out of all of them would probably be the one that I would stick to.

I also love to hang out with my friends and be on my phone like any "normal" teenager. I spend alot of my time on my phone not only to texting and calling people but "stalking" my favorite singer Rihanna and playing around with all my Social Media. I have facebook, instagram and snapchat; essentials to a seventeen year old girl in 2015. Out of all of them my favorite one is snapchat, it is so fun and easy to just show all of my friends in a couple of seconds what I'm doing, where and with who. It is also easy to just send individual videos to my friends when we are having a conversation saying whatever I need to say instead of typing it out throught text. "Insta" is the one that follows, all the "real cute pics" go on there for the world to see. It is a different atmosphere though, you can't really be as goofy as you are on snapchat because it does not go away unless you delete the picture. Finally I have facebook where I mostly communicate with my Colombian friends since most of them don't really have snapchat. 

Rihanna!

English is not my first lenguage I was born and raised in Colombia and I moved to the United States when I was 12 years old. I am a very talkative person but it is not as easy for me to put into writting what I say. I feel as if I get stuck at times and I can't find the right words to express what I am feeling. I was thought the basics skills of writting during my high school carreer, how to do the format, spelling, puntuation etc; but I want to take my writting to a different level. I want to become as good of a writter as I am of a speaker. I want people to be able to live through the things I write, just how I feel that they live through the stories I tell them. Right now I am a C+ writter but I want to become the best writter I can be.