The experience at CESL was very interesting! I met three sympathetic Asian students, two from China and one from Korea.
I did not discover anything particular about “being foreign” and learning another language because, coming from France, English was my second language, too.
I noticed that, compared to students from other parts of the world, the Asian students had the most difficulty articulating English words clearly. And that reminded me of my own experience and the troubles associated with learning a new language: some sounds in our native tongue cannot be found in other languages, and vice versa, which is why we can’t replicate certain of these sounds. It made me realize that the language in which we are raised determines the sounds that we will be able to produce later in life. And once we reach a certain age, it becomes more and more difficult not to have an accent!
The international students definitely had a cultural identity (by that I mean that they were not totally “Americanized”). But their cultural identity greatly differed from the one discussed in Eula Biss’s text. Her story focused more on poverty and America becoming the “death sentence” of Mexico. She mainly emphasized the differences between the American culture and the Mexican one, but how they were analogous in the case of poverty. She also mentions the hatred and negative outlook of Mexicans towards Americans.
Her text was pessimistic compared to the experience we had with the international students, which was very positive. Most of us and most of the foreign students come from similar backgrounds: none were richer or poorer than the others, which is what created this gap in Eula Biss's story.
I thought your comparison of Eula's text to the international students was interesting. I didn't really think about how much of a gap there was between the rich and poor in the text when I was thinking about the international students. I thought it was a good point to bring up because no one at CESL acted like they were better than any of us, where as in the text I think that was a major issue along with somewhat of a battle between the races. I would also have to agree that our experience was very positive and I think it was an eye opener for many of the kids, both in our class and the international students, to actually hear another persons culture and background when it is so different than our yet in ways very similar can be shocking. I think like in Eula's text it takes people to go to another country or in our case talk with people from another country to really see how other people view our culture because sometimes we become so use to it we don't see the pros and cons it can have.
ReplyDeleteI really found it interesting the way you contrasted the CESL students and Eula Bliss. I hadn't really made the connection about how the pessimistic view of the text was radically different than our experience. I liked they way you took the experience and related it back to your own life. Although you are from France, I'm sure it was just as strange and difficult as one of the CESL students with learning a new language. Your style of writing in this blog showed your empathetic persona, a great quality to possess in writing and general.
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