Extra Credit work ELL101

Well at first, before I started college, language was already something important to me, but I learned much more of its importance when I started this cluster at Laguardia Community college. Language was important to me because I was born in the USA, an English speaking country and I grew up in Mauritius island, a french and creole speaking island. So I was a fluent English speaker, but I had to learn two more languages, and always juggle among the three languages during my whole life. But it really helps me now, as being bilingual is really a big thing nowadays. I also had to learn the language in order to communicate with the other members of my family because they only knew creole. The most interesting part is that while learning all these languages, I started to develop a certain fondness for languages. That's why today I want to become a translator at the United Nations. So I can say that language has a very positive effect on my life.

To be honest, before I didn't really know the importance of language. To my mind, it was just simple words, sentences, books, that we write and read, or speak. But then during my first semester at LAGCC I discovered that language is huge tool in life. It helps you break barriers, know more people and cultures of different countries. At first, learning new languages sounded really tough but as I was still young, I learned it really fast. I can still picture myself sitting in class and not understanding anything of what the teacher and other students were saying. Today it benefits me a lot.

During this semester, my view and opinions about “what is language” certainly changed, or broadened if I want to be more precise. I have learned that babies have several stages while learning how to talk, and it also depends on the atmosphere in which he is that will determine what language the baby will learn to speak, and also the accent he or she will have ( TED video watched in class) , That there are 6012 languages in the world (George Yule, The study of Language) and that a lot of languages/ dialects are being killed, and that linguists are doing huge researches to know the maximum amount of words in order to save these languages (Movie: The linguists). And also that forming sentences is not only the simple task of putting words together, its a more complex task which consists of putting together several components of language such as NP and VP. ( George Yule, The Study Of language). So I must say that the knowledge that I gained from this class helped me to know how important, how broad and how interesting languages can be. It is also a really vital thing in life, as a baby will learn how to speak depending on the environment he is in, and there are also several steps he will go through before being able to speak properly. I had no idea about all that! So now I am taking this whole subject of language a bit more seriously.


Finally, I can say that I understand a bit better how difficult it is for other people learning new languages, and I also admire people who can speak several languages ( even though I speak three ) because I know some people who speak more than 3 languages. I would really like to join the group of linguists, learn lots of languages and also do research on almost instinct languages and try to save them! I would also encourage kids in countries like Bolivia, Syria etc to keep on speaking their native languages, so that they do not become instinct in the future. It is important for their culture.

ENG 101 Finals: The Language of Human Rights

In my blog about The Language of Human Rights, I would like to concentrate on the topic about how important human rights are to our lives, but also some history of how human rights were really won. I will be using all materials that I have learned from the cluster to illustrate my ideas. Human rights are the rights that we have simply by being born on earth. We are all born equal, whatever the culture we are from, or whatever our ethnicity is. But in some cases, people had to fight for their rights. For example, African Americans were not treated properly even after the Universal Declaration of Human rights was published. The UDHR is a document which protects the rights of all people on earth. The Language of Human Rights is, in my opinion, the language that we use to defend ourselves from the cruelty of some people who do not treat people fairly.

Martin Luther King Jr. was the catalyst of the black people’s battle for rights. He led marches, protests and campaigns such as the Birmingham march, The Montgomery bus boycott and the Poor People’s Campaign. Even though the black people were protected under the UDHR, they didn’t benefit from them the way white people did as the idea of white supremacy was still lively present. To summarize this point and also to connect it to other classes of this cluster, I will say that the use of language has helped black people fight for their rights. This connects to the class Law & human rights where we learn that language can be used in a specific way to fight for rights against the government using the UDHR. I remember Dr. King saying that the UDHR was like an invalid check, a check returned back saying “Insufficient funds” and that the African American people cannot accept something like this. We can also relate it to the class of Introduction to Language, which is a class where we learn deeply about language and its uses, by saying that the civil rights movement, led by Dr. King, was the use of language in order to obtain what he wanted as for example, marches, boycotts and campaigns are ways of trying to send a message to the government saying the they are not happy with the situation that they are in.

Well to connect all three classes together I could summarize it like this: Intro to language teaches us deeply about languages and their uses, Law and Human Rights is a class where we learn terms related to law and also the language we could use to defend ourselves in situations where we are illegally treated and finally ENG 101 is the class where we learned how to use English properly, for example we can see how Dr. King is in his speeches, the energy he has and also the tone that he uses to speak and to send his message, and especially to be convincing. So we can say that this is how the language of human rights work; you need to know the laws, how to use language and also how to be convincing and aggressive in order to send a clear message and to make it become effective. But the limit of one person’s rights is where another person’s rights starts.