Rishika Datta

English

“To never let something or someone get in your way from doing something.”- James wrote a narrative about how it was hard for him to speak English from a young age. It wasn’t that he had another language to speak or anything, he was just genuinely struggling to speak. I admire his confidence as a writer for sharing a personal moment and explaining how it affects him to encourage others not to give up. He did this by describing what he did to be confident in himself when all he did was feel embarrassed and showed the support system (his mom) he had for this difficult journey. He explained some life-changing events, for example, his parents divorcing and being put into speech therapy. “ My speech therapy impacted me in a way that I can interact with others and be able to speak fluently with other people.” Being in speech therapy helped improve not only his language learning skills but also his social skills. The intended audience can be students, who struggle to speak in English. James discusses his struggles with speaking and having to go through speech therapy, this can be seen that one shouldn’t be ashamed of going through these processes to help learn English. The language use and style of the narrative fit the purpose of the literacy narrative because it feels as if James is talking to the audience directly. One question that I asked James was “If you could say one thing to your readers what would it be?” and he responded with  If I could say one thing to my readers, it would be to always believe in what you are capable of doing because I never had hope at a young age to trust myself.” James expressed this in his writing because he wanted to connect with his audience.  From my experience people, especially students tend to get discouraged during their time and won’t share their struggles with anyone close to them because they feel that they are bothering them. However, they do like advice from strangers because it feels more natural to be open with them because they won’t even know you, so you don’t have much to be embarrassed about. Sometimes it can just be that they don’t want to share because they feel that no one would ever understand them, James can help students understand that they are not alone when it comes to learning English and in fact not to be ashamed of going to speech therapy.