DW 1 (b).

(b). For your second writing exploration, you'll practice analyzing course texts. For this essay, select a specific quote/passage/idea that resonates with you from one of the readings. Summarize that passage or idea, and explain either how it is similar/different from the experiences outlined in your literacy narrative, OR use this exploration to analyze how you think the autor(s) would support/reject or add to those experiences you've previously outlined.
- "As descendants of those caught up in these forces, we found ourselves in a classroom with a speech therapist who wasn't sure what to do with us. Nobody was dyslexic. No one was aphasic. There was not even a stutterer among us. I mean, here was this young white girl, a teaching assistant at the university, who was just trying to get her Ph.D., and she was presented with this perplexing problem of people who didn't have any of the communication disorders she had been trained to deal with." It is a passage taken from Geneva Smitherman's "From Ghetto Lady to Critical Linguist".
I chose this passage because I have somewhat a similar incident compared to that of Geneva Smitherman. The main idea about this passage is that Geneva Smitherman is saying that she was put in the classroom with other people and a speech therapist. In the beginning of her story, "From Ghetto Lady to Critical Linguist", she said that when she was about to go to college, she flunked (failed) a speech test, which a college required every applicants to take. Then she tells that her reason to fail the speech test was because of the difference between how she pronounces some words compared to what a college considers as a standard way of pronouncing words. That is why she tells readers that she has put among the groups in the classroom with a speech therapist. However, the speech therapist wasn't able to find a way of helping those students in the classroom.
When I was in Korea before coming to the United States to study, I learned English both in school and private academy. When I went to a private academy for the first time, they made me to take test to see which level of classroom that I need to go and study. They told me that my grammar is not that bad at all. However, my pronunciation is not close to how white people would pronounce the words. So I couldn't get into the high level of classroom, instead they put me into one of middle level of classrooms in the academy. Once I got into the classroom, where they put me into, the instructor told me that he wasn't sure that why they put me into that class with having some grammar knowledge. I felt that the reason why my pronunciation wasn't even close to that of white people was that I have been taught pronouncing English words with having Korean accents. My experience at the English private academy that I went in Korea is somewhat similar to the experience that Geneva Smitherman had in the classroom after flunked the speech test. Even though I don't have African American accent when I speak, I have Korean (my native language) accent. I think that if Smitherman hears my experience, she might tell me that keep trying to develop my pronunciation without feeling discouraged the fact that I have Korean accent.