Brandon Bazemore

December 3, 2025

Professor Colombo Russell

Eng 101 – Freshman Composition

Final Reflection

Throughout the assignments I have turned in this semester, I was taught many things about the world as well as myself. I was able to gain an understanding of how language impacts people, not just as a barrier to how we communicate with one another, but also how different individuals navigate the world. I was able to gain an understanding of how important language preservation is. In my research into how important it is to preserve physical media, I also learned how important it is to preserve language and linguistic integrity. I also learned a lot from working with classmates. I was able to gain an understanding about how language impacted the way they navigate the world and got them to where they are today. Lastly, I learned about how language affected my own journey. When beginning the class, I thought that I would not have anything important to share, since the only language I know is English in a primarily English speaking country. I was able to learn how my dialect affected my identity and my feeling of belonging in my own community.

While completing my rhetorical situation worksheets, I was able to understand how language affects others’ sense of belonging in the world. Reading through “Mother’s Tongue” by Amy Tan, I learned how childhood experiences can shape one’s understanding of language and dialect. Her writing came from a deep emotional standpoint as she discusses her sense of shame for how she spoke which manifested itself as resentment towards her mother, who is a non-native English speaker. The main argument that Tan is trying to communicate is that dialect and other linguistic differences should not be used to discriminate against someone and that those differences do not tell the full story of a person. She takes a reflective stance as she uses personal experiences to enforce empathy towards non-native English speakers such as her mother. Her experiences watching her mother face discrimination for speaking “broken” English as well as being discouraged from pursuing writing because of her heritage help to support her argument that one should not be judged over linguistic differences. Despite her experiences, Tan is a renowned author.

While writing my synthesis essay, I had the opportunity to do research into the importance of physical media, as that was my topic of choice. In doing so, I faced the challenge of connecting it to the theme of the class, which is language and literacy. I was able to learn more about how physical media not only affects the preservation of things like historical records, vinyl records, books and CDs, but also language. I learned more about how different communities depend on physical media to preserve language. I also learned about how physical media can preserve linguistic integrity. While it is important for us as a society to acknowledge how different words and terms can become “outdated” or not quite seen in a positive light as we learn more about how they can affect different communities, physical media provides a barrier against censorship and forces us to grow from our past rather than hide from it.

I learned a lot from the experiences of my classmates. I gained different perspectives of how language impacted the way that they navigated the world. I am thankful to go to such a culturally diverse school where I can understand how language impacts everyone, from those who are recently coming to this country and have unfortunately experienced linguistic biases in their English learning journeys, to those who have felt language discrimination within their own community due to not being “experienced” in their language. One story that stuck out to me was a classmate sharing their language and literacy narrative. It was about how they felt alienated from their own community due to not being fluent in Spanish. While I surely cannot relate to that, it was eye opening and showed me how linguistic discrimination not only comes from external forces, but sometimes from the community that one would expect to accept them unconditionally.

Lastly, I learned about how language affected my own journey. I remember hearing about what this class would be about when the semester began. Me being a native English speaker, and it being the only language that I am fluent in made me believe that my experiences were “less worthy” of being spoken about. Throughout these last few weeks, I learned about how even as an exclusive English speaker, I do have experiences worthy of being shared. I was forced to think about how being teased for sounding “too proper” shaped me as a person throughout the years. I realized how integral language was to my self acceptance journey and I am incredibly grateful to be given that opportunity.