Cassandra Cruz

Professor Amy Albuerme 

English 110

1 December 2025

Throughout the year there are many things I have learned and many new perceptions gained. From being able to properly analyze linguistic attitudes to exploring many genres of reading and writing, there is a lot of new insight that was gained. I was able to learn new strategies when reading and interpreting while drafting and revising my writings. Many of the readings from this semester have helped me gain these abilities, for example “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the Future Life of Willie Jordan” by June Jordan. There are many readings and writings we experienced this semester that I feel have helped me further understand the cultural significance to writing styles and how someone’s personal experiences create lessons that can be bigger than just themselves. Many of these writings can create communities for people who also relate to the author’s experiences and help people feel seen and understood. 

One main thing that was very impactful to me was expanding my knowledge on how people experience language differently depending on culture.  When researching for my synthesis essay is when I further realized this. My synthesis essay focused on how the colonization of Cuba affected their language and literacy. In this essay I emphasized the major impact that the colonization in Cuba in the late 1400’s had and this was mainly due to the exploitation of resources and native indigenous people being forced to leave their cultures behind and adopt a new one. I applied this claim to show the difference in language of the native indigenous cubans and the more modern language cubans speak which is spanish. This resonated with me because it shows a lot of the origins of my own background. 

Another main theme I found insightful this semester was there being no one proper way of speaking english. I further expanded on this idea when writing my Language and Literacy essay. In this essay I expanded on the idea that there is no one proper way of speaking English and just because a person does not speak English in the way that is generally deemed as “standard”, it does not make it incorrect. I used personal experiences to further explain this, I used examples that I had seen happen to my mother and I knew that even if a person’s English is not seen as standard it is still correct. I applied these situations to my essay because it consisted of first hand experiences that I know many other people can resonate with that further explain how there is no “proper” English. 

Another main theme that resonated with me is the importance of writing styles and appreciating different authentic forms of writing. In “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the Future Life of Willie Jordan” by June Jordan emphasises the importance of black English and its legitimacy. This resonated with me because of the authentic writing style when explaining the story about racial injustice and an act of police brutality that took place in Brooklyn. This writing is very insightful to me because it expands perspective on writing styles and the importance of different ways of english. 

In my translation 1 assignment I emphasised the parts I had found most important from my language and literacy essay. I emphasized quotes like “Even though my mother was always the smartest in the room, people would often find her accent hard to understand, leading them to making assumptions about her.” I touched on how a lot of people have a stereotype against hispanic people assuming that if english was not their first language or if they were not born in an english speaking country, that they are uneducated. This is something I used as a claim because it deeply resonated with me and I know it resonated with a lot more people in communities that may feel isolated. 

Throughout the semester, there are many concepts and ways of perception I acquired. It is important to acknowledge the different ways to write and speak languages and how someone’s culture can play into that and even add more depth. I have gained many new writing skills and enhanced my writing skills through learning how to properly analyze rhetorical situations. Different genres of writing can also be something that contributes to the expansion of perspective and that is why I want to emphasize the importance of it. Everyone experiences language differently and it is best to appreciate them all as they come. 

Example from translation 2 assignment