On this page, please write for 10 minutes about your “stance” on your chosen topic. Please announce your topic clearly in your free write.
Home considerations you can make to guide you. These are suggestions only. It is your free write, so write as you please.
- Why are you interested in your chosen topic?
- Do you have a personal connection to it?
- Does your topic affect you? Does it reflect in any way your lived experience?
- What sparked your interest in your topic?
- Have you already read something in your research that you found interesting? Or controversial? Did you read something unexpected or something that surprised you?
I believe my topic is varied in general society. This meaning people are widely affected by the cause of social expectations. My motive behind this comes from Safwat Saleem and he helped me understand the main issue which is the notion of normal. He made a challenge, which is I decided to focus on this topic.
My chosen topic is how does culture influences the way you speak English. I think the most interesting thing about my topic is how culture and language have a major connection with each other, and it’s interesting because I found the online research, the fact that in the US, most people don’t have English as their first language, and about 13% of people who have Spanish as their primary language.
The reason I am interested in my topic is because of Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”. After reading her text and being put into her shoes through her personal anecdotes I was truly drawn in to the subject. Personally, I don’t connect to this topic but it still is very interesting to me and is a problem in our society. This topic doesn’t affect me personally but affects our society as a whole. If we can all come together to stop discrimination once and for all it would be a huge breakthrough for our country as that has been an issue for centuries.
It’s been difficult for to me come up with a topic, I chose a broad topic then I changed it to something more specific. I’m focusing on What cultural expectations does society have on Hispanics how do these expectations influence one’s perspective on Hispanics and how do these cultural expectations influence Hispanics themselves. However, I still like this topic isn’t good enough to what we’re suppose to focus on writing about so I might change the topic again. I choose this topic because I still have yet to find that love and connection with my Mexican culture and I feel as though thats’s because of the low cultural expectations society put upon all Hispanics such as being seen as drug dealers or lazy according to our current U.S president. I feel as though that brings down my motivation because were not seen with high expectations in life so there’s no high expectation to reach. This is how it affects me and I understand that it’s negative mindset but it’s how I see it which is why, I have yet to truly love and appreciate my Culture. I have read one article relating to my topic and how these low expectations of society affected her positivity rather then negatively like myself. They view these low expectations as motivation which I found interesting
Im interested in my chosen topic because I too have been a victim of struggling to speak English. I didn’t grow up in America so when I came back here, English became my second language. Although I learned English earlier than most people that didn’t grow up here it was still a challenge and I had to deal with peers around me. The readings in class sparked me to chose this topic because it was very relatable.
I am interested in this topic because I personally have a connection to it being the child of an immigrant and being born here. My topic does affect me since it is about how well immigrants and 2nd generation citizens perform in their respective countries, and that includes me. I became interested in this topic because I wanted to see, between someone who was born in another country immigrating, and someone who was born here, the differences in how their lives turn out, just out of curiosity. In terms of my research, I have read that they perform just as well as native born people depending on some factors such as where they settle and their income when they start out, but this is from only 1 source.
I chose to do research on immigrant that face inequality in the United States because of their language.
Yes, I have a personal connection with that topic. When I came to the United States, English was my biggest challenge. I faced rejections when I first came here because of my language. One of the most significant rejections that impacted me was when I started applying for high school. The director of admission in the school I applied to said she would accept me if I passed four specific Regents exams(although she knows that we met her the week that we got to the US so she knows the struggle I have for language from the beginning). I passed the exams and then she said that she wanted to have a final interview with me. In that interview, she rejected me claiming that my English was at the level of an elementary school student and I would not be able to catch up with the students and the teachers. She rejected me although she knew that English is not my first language on the first day I met her.
Despite the fact that my personal experience has interested me to write about this topic. I also want to express more people’s voices on how they felt because it’s not fair to be only judged as a person for your language.
The reason as to why I’m interested in my chosen topic mostly has to do how I’ve seen this topic affect people. I definitely have a personal connection to the topic because I have a foreign accent and from my personal experience, I’ve seen how my intellectual ability are viewed negatively when I come into contact with people. I wasn’t immediately interested in this topic, but when I did research on it and found how people are denied of certain job opportunities solely due to the stereotypes and biases that come with a foreign accent, I’ve found myself wanting to research more about it. Something I read that I found interesting was a controversial in which an employer denied his employee a promotion simply because of his accent which doesn’t get in the way of his work. In fact, others in the workplace find this employer’s conversational skills fine. This was interesting for me because he blatantly admitted that was the reason and he gave the promotion to another employer.
My paper focuses on language discrimination. The reason I chose to write about this topic is because I feel a personal connection to it having experienced language discrimination when I was younger, and back in Greece. I already know that some of the things I will be writing about, I have experienced myself, and thus I feel like this will motivate me to write a better paper. What sparked my interest in this topic was Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, because her anecdotes were very relatable, and some of the points that she made had never occurred to me before. So far, I have not found any “groundbreaking” information through my research; only what I was expecting to find.
I am researching how cultural assimilation between 2nd generation immigrants can cause a disconnect to native culture. I am a second generation immigrant and have personally experienced this. Growing up, I was always told by my family that I was American, not the nationality of my parent’s homeland. This separated me from most of my family, since my sister and I were the only ones born in America. Even though much of our culture was still present in our daily lives, there were some components that were Americanized.
I was interested in the topic Language Diversity and Education because of what I read from Amy’s Tan “Mother Tongue” when she draw a connection between language and education. I feel that this topic has some sort of connection to me because as an Asian, I was expected to do good in all my classes especially test. My parent expect me to do well and understand math but not as much in English. They understand that I wouldn’t do well in English as much. At a young age, my parent would forced me to study all the time. I feel like some people don’t do well in school because of the language they grew up with. I seem to come across that many schools only provided resources in one language only and most of the time would only be their language.
I am very interested in my topic because it’s about Asian immigrants and even though I’m not an immigrant, my parents are. I feel like diving deeper into this topic. After all, it’s something that not a lot of people discuss, and even though I’m not an immigrant I feel like I struggle with English like an immigrant would since I learned a different language before. I would consider this topic as something that reflects my lived experiences as a child. I’ve taken a look at the sources I looked up for my research paper and found that some of them have more information than other and I would like to use those that don’t have much information as back up for the research paper just in case if I need to add more support to the essay.
I was interested with my chosen topic since growing up, I’ve had multiple experiences where my friends/family and I were judged right away, based off of our accents/appearance. Within one of my sources, it had said that a first impression is crucial. Well, when someone walks up to talk to you, the first things you notice are their appearance. However, the thing that sticks out is the way of talking and by that I mean, their accent. You can find out a decent amount of the person’s background, but also subject them to unfavorable and negative stereotypes. Because of his, I’ve realized that there is a correlation between the perception behind someone’s accent and the social interactions that follow. I was curious to see the results of some of the experiments that were conducted and wanted to write about that certain topic.
I choose the topic, because an African immigrant I learnt about the racial issues in this country through the media, schools, and people. Learning about the country history of discrimination made me question about how true our American values are expressed. Many African immigrant can relate to the difficulty of assimilation into the African American community and perspective African immigrants and African Americans have for each other. Some of research paper stated some unexpected, such as African immigrants being the most highly educated group in the United States, but receive less than their white peer who may meet their educational achievements. Some people would stereotypically it is the Asian community in the United States, but the fact surprised me.
I am interested in the topic of language discrimination because I believe that it is an important issue that is overlooked by many. If people are constantly discriminated against for speaking non-standard English I know that it will become a norm in society, which is not good. My inspiration for this topic comes from Amy Tan since she had pointed out an issue that was occurring in the 1990s and it is still happening today. I do connect personally because I have been a witness and on the receiving end of discrimination due to how I spoke. My topic reflects on my lived experiences. While reading some of my sources for my essay I had found many instances of language discrimination that extend into schools and everyday life.
My chosen topic was what negative impacts stereotypes can have on the black community. I chose this topic because it was something I can relate to and is an important topic. I do, however, don’t want to take the typical approach which usually dives into police brutality and death. I do agree that those are common and major issues but I wanted to keep it simple and maybe shed some light on the negative parts that peo0ple may often miss because they aren’t seen as serious or too common.