Reflection on The Importance of Speech and Writing (Essay Example)

Controlling Purpose: My personal experience impacted the way I learned how to write and speak. I learned how to speak from people around me during my upbringing.  Since I was exposed to sounds and words verbally from a young age, it was more natural for me to speak, and eventually write, in a conversational tone. Academic writings posed new challenges for me because I had to relearn how to communicate in a way that doesn’t feel natural. 

Body:

While reading threshold concept 1.6, I became aware of the complexity of writing and the simplicity of speech and how they differ.  I have always found it very difficult and complex to write academically; this is probably because the schools I went to incentivized me to write in a standardized, proper manner, and there were levels of expectations for me to demonstrate my understanding of the content. Writing started to become complex for me from primary school to secondary; by that time I knew two languages and I would think differently based on the language I spoke or wrote in. Because I learned Creole at home, the process of learning was informal compared to how I learned French, which was in a formal setting. Since I learned Creole in an informal manner, trying to think in Creole and then write formally in French was impossible. When given an assignment that had to do with writing, even though I was bilingual, the homework did not help most of the time. The language differences and the manner in that I knew how to speak and write in both languages caused a gap.  I could not think in Creole to create ideas to write formally in French.

When I lived in Haiti and went to school there, I would speak French in school because the education system is in French, but when I am in my house or around my friends we would speak in Haitian Creole. Whereas, outside of the classroom, at home, or anywhere else, basic social writing was more creative, less structured, and more conversational, making it feel more natural. The way I speak and write varies from when I am in school compared to the way I do so at home. At home, I am not willing to follow all the grammatical rules and pressures as when I am at school.

 Unlike speech where babies mimic people speaking around them as they grow up, the process of writing is more complex than that; since it's not a natural phenomenon, it does not feel as normal in comparison to speech. I've seen that when babies get older if I try to make any sound or speak gibberish words, they would mimic me by saying the same thing, or the other way around, I'd laugh at the amazement of them repeating the word as if they are communicating with me. 

Even when speaking, especially in school or a professional setting, it is expected in the school setting to abide by certain rules on how to speak (i.e., following spoken grammatical conventions, etc.), yet it is not as complex as writing. I think before anybody can write, they will learn how to speak first. I would describe this occurrence as an order of operation. Whereas children learning to speak at home, simply copying people around them, they don’t think learning to speak is an assignment for them, therefore they don’t feel pressured to meet or exceed the expectations when learning to speak. This was emphasized in Dryer's work where he noted

“Note how quickly and easily almost all children acquire expressive fluency in their native language[s] and how eagerly and seemingly involuntarily most adults participate in children’s efforts at language Acquisition.”   

Oftentimes, I blame myself for not exceeding the level of writing I am expected to meet. Instructions when writing tends to be basic and easy to understand, in my opinion, I struggle with writing most when I complicate the task and try to write in a way that is more complex than what is asked of me. “It’s useful to remember that writing is not natural because writers tend to judge their writing processes too harshly – comparing them to the ease with which they usually speak.  Speech, however, employs an extensive array of modalities unavailable to writing: gesture, expression, pacing, register, silences, and clarifications” (29, threshold concept 1.6) 

“Writers can also benefit from the realization that they needn’t blame themselves for the shortcomings of the system they’ve inherited” (29, 1.6) – there are rules within any language system and it’s important to recognize that these are different – link to being multilingual 

Based on how different students learned to write, students who went to high school, during their days in high school, they’re expected to write a certain way or had to follow a rubric for their English class, Now that they are in college it is different the expectations the teacher have of them, they should know that their writing style is different compared to other students and how can they transition their writing to the college level

Conclusion:

I learned that writing is complex, it is not something that happens innately. It is a learned thing and the learning process is formal and there are certain standards or ways of writing that are preferred over others. Speech, however, is different from writing; it can be mimicked and it is something humans have been doing since we were born.