Cover Letter

Phase one of English 110 has been a very productive and impactful phase for me. I have learned to overcome a lot of things that I was quite opposed to at the start of the phase. The first thing was that at first, I was quite opposed to writing a narrative about my relationship with language. Before this class, I never really thought I had a special relationship with language or a special story to share with the class. To me, language was just something that I used to communicate with people and not something that I considered an important part of me.

However, this phase made me realize the only reason I thought that was because I never really focused on it. When I had to find a moment in my life to write about in the language and literacy narrative, I really had to think hard, but then when I thought about the story I chose to write about, I realized that my relationship with language really impacted my life in that it indirectly caused me to have the friends and mindset that I have. The narrative allowed me to reminisce about the struggles I had with English early on and how a single social interaction has allowed me to transition into the English language smoothly.

Another thing that I was quite skeptical of doing was presenting my spoken language and literacy narrative, since I am a shy student and usually don’t do well in presentations I was already nervous about the presentation. To add to that fact, I also didn’t like the idea of presenting about myself as I didn’t want to cringe or stutter in the middle of my presentation. However, when I went to present I did well compared to the other presentations I did in the past. I would say the visual aides we were allowed to have helped me a lot through that as it gave me things to talk about. I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation and hearing about my classmates’ journey with language as well. 

One concept that really impacted my learning and writing practices is the rhetorical strategies of ethos, pathos, and logos. When we were introduced to ethos, pathos, and logos in class, it really made me interested in those specific rhetorical strategies because I sort of knew their definitions already as I had learned about them in 8th-grade English. Learning about ethos, pathos, and logos revived my knowledge of them, making the activity where we had to identify whether the various ads had ethos, logos, and/or pathos in them, one of my favorite activities in phase one. This activity helped me complete course outcome 4, which was to “recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.” Due to the lesson on logos, ethos, and pathos, I now try to identify each strategy in any piece of text that I read. The rhetorical strategies have especially helped me write commentaries on articles that I have read in my Contemporary Asia 202 class. Overall, this has been a very eventful and fun phase and I look forward to the next.

My Journey with Language and Literacy presented through the journey of my friendship with my best friend Ohan.

I was never an extrovert. I am the type to shy away from small talk, and not go out of my way to make friends. I never really saw the purpose in making friends when I had my toys, my siblings, and my parents/relatives. However, it never occurred to me that a single social interaction with a person would have such a profound impact on the course of my life and my relationship with the English language and Bangla, my mother tongue. Growing up in Bangladesh, I grew up speaking informal Bangla. To young me, Bangla was just a mixture of sounds I had to make to communicate with everyone, as I didn’t even know how to write it. At the age of six, still in the premature stage of learning Bangla, my parents and I moved to the United States, where a whole new language and culture awaited me.

8 year old me didn’t understand much but I knew that to adjust to my new country I would have to fit in: by changing my mother tongue and my culture. Firstly, acquiring proficiency in the English language was a significant concern for me as I found myself lacking both written and spoken skills. At the moment it felt like I would never overcome the barrier of English, as it all sounded like gibberish to me. The weight of this thought kept me from even trying to learn as I didn’t want to seem “stupid” or “cringeworthy.” 

For the first few days, I took the easy way out, I stayed home, resorting to my parents, and staying in my comfort zone. I didn’t want any interactions in which I would have to speak English and would possibly be mocked for it. However, eventually I was enrolled in elementary school, where along with my social awkwardness, the language barrier, prevented me from being a prosperous student. After the first few days, the feeling of loneliness started to take over, so much so that I actually started craving social interactions. I remember wanting to make friends or at least interact with my peers, so I would occasionally blurt out words in Bangla such as “Tumar naam ki?” (What is your name?) and “Madam ki boltese?” (What is the teacher saying?) hoping there would be some words that English and Bangla shared but no one would understand and I would fall back into the depths of loneliness. It didn’t help either that I couldn’t even look the part of an American kid. All the kids around me wore bright sneakers with Nike swooshes and my all-black sketchers stood out like a sore thumb.  I knew things couldn’t continue like this but I didn’t know what to do. At that point in my life I felt stuck and helpless, like I would never fit in or get used to my new life and I would eventually have to return to Bangladesh.

 Eventually, there came a day when a new classmate joined our class. I took particular interest in him because he looked like me: brown skin and dark black hair. I had a gut feeling he was Bengali. The whole school day that day, I slowly built up courage to ask him if he was Bengali. A part of me thought,

 “Don’t do it, why would there be another Bengali kid in here where none of your other classmates are Bengalis, you are only going to embarrass yourself when he looks at you weird.”

Another part of me said,

“Do it, if you are wrong, the embarrassment will only be temporary, however, if you are right, it can potentially dig you out of the hole of loneliness and actually make your life normal.”

 So during lunch, I gathered up the courage and approached Ohan and asked him,

“Tumi ki Bangali?”(Are you Bengali?). 

To my joy, he replied, “Hai”(Yes).

After that, I began a long conversation with him in Bangla, questions like “Tumi Bangaldesher kun jaga thike?” (Which city in Bangladesh are you from?) and “Tumi kun khela khelo?” (Which sport do you like to play?), made me really happy. For the first time ever I was enjoying myself at an American school, and I felt like I belonged as I was able to speak my mother tongue to my heart’s content. 

From that moment on, I made sure to hang around Ohan. Unlike me, Ohan was born in America and had the privilege of knowing both English and Bangla. As a result, my friendship with him was basically a portal that helped me connect to the rest of the English-speaking people in my school. Whenever we would have to do an activity in class, Ohan would translate everything to me and I would actually be able to participate in class activities. If I wanted to say something, I would say it in Bengali to Ohan and he would translate it to English for me to say. After school, we picked up a hobby together that would help us bond even more. We would go play handball at Heckscher Park. The handball court is where I would go on to learn a lot of my English as Ohan would speak to me in English and then translate it to Bangla. I copied every word he said in English and began catching on to the conversations he had with me. I even began copying his accent and his favorite term “oh man” became my favorite as well. The interaction I had with Ohan was all I needed to integrate into a fluent English speaker and grow the confidence that I needed to have a social life.  I never knew social interactions could be so meaningful as to change my life. As a result, I have learned to never back down from making friends, and actively look to make meaningful connections with people because it is a vital element of life.