Rodriguez Blog

The world is becoming a smaller place. This is something that I had pulled from the article we had to read. As time moves on it seems like boarders disappear, different cultures of people have to live together and be in unfamiliar terrioty. Most cultures have their own uniqe customs, language is apart of this. We all learn a language at a very young age, mostly what is spoken around us it is just the natural way of life. It is often frustrating to try and learn another language if we are unfamilar to it. The United States to me is a HUGE melting pot of the world's cultures and customs. There are people with heritages from all over the world living together everyday and the amount of diversity is increasing everyday. Some people have a problem with this though because when immigrants come here they may or may not be fluent in English, the dominate, but not offical language of the United States.

The problem doesn't lie within the language barrier itself but more with how the language is spoken. Even if we all spoke the same language, different people speak it in different ways. The easiest example to point out is the language of men and women. Generally men only speak about 7,000 words a day, while woman use around 20,000 in a day. Often times men and women are confused with each other and this is a clear reason why. Each side doesn't understand why the other talks in the way they do and it frustrates them. Now apply this to different cultures; tones of voice can mean different things among cultures. Some people may find sarcasm as natural, funny or disrespectful. You could be offending another person but think nothing of it cause it doesn't seem offensive to you.

Now lets revisit the immigrant language issue. Even if someone learns English it will still be very tough for them to fully understand the ways English is spoken here in America. It must be extremely frustrating for someone to work so hard and still not be right there in the mix, and often times people are insenitive to this. Some people tend to look down on those that speak a different language or make fun of those that may not understand fully. Put yourself in their shoes and just think of not being able to communicate with the people around you, then working hard to be able to and still not being thought of as an equal. My best friend lives in a Portuguese speaking house and when I was younger it was extremely hard to try and talk to his family. Over the years we have worked out a way to try and understand each other without speaking the same language and it works out pretty well. It is something I enjoied doing because I have gotten to know and respect them and I even understand a little Portuguese now. It is really a great feeling when you take the time to work with someone and try and get over each others language barriers.

I know this isn't exactly how the blog is supposed it work but it was just what was on my mind while reading and I figured I would share that. Perhaps this blog itself is an example of the different ways of language between all people.

My first visit to the WB

Well today was the day that I went to my school and practiced what I'm going to do for pretty much the rest of my life. Everything went good, except for me going to the wrong school at first (oops) but that was easily fixed by just going next door. I was a little nervous at first not really knowing what to expect but those feelings settled quickly once I got started. Ms. C, the teacher, was warm and welcoming and sent me to work right away. I was somewhat taken aback sicne this was my first time going and I wasn't sure exactly what to do, but again once I began it was fun. I started off by working with one girl, Mary, and helping her with her morning math problems. She was very good at math but had a little trouble with the word problems. At first she tried to get me to just give her the answers and at first that was what I was doing, but then I realized that I was there to help her solve the problems not do them for her. So after the first couple of problems I made her either sound out the words she couldn't get or read the problem with her. It was pretty much smooth sailing after that. Later Ms. C had the children sit on the carpet and surround her so they could work on their story outlines. I wasn't really sure what this activity was at first but then I caught on. The kids had to write their own short stories and the focus of these stroires were to make them use descriptive words and more than just basic words. Some of the stories were quite funny, the girl I worked with this time, Sara, was writing a story about having a house on the sun made of ice cream, cookies and muffins. She could eat the house as much as she wanted to and it would all just magically reappear the next day. After this I was called down to have a breif meeting with the principle and he jus tried to make sure I comfortable. When I returned to the classroom we were working on word walls. The kids had to take certian "s" words and seperate them into: spr, scr, str and oddball catagories, then put the words in alpabetical order. Before I knew it my two hours were up and it was time to go. I was ambushed with a wave of kids looking for high-fives and asking when I would be back. I am really looking forward to my return trip in two weeks.

Intro blog

The name is Josh Fenner and I set this up for my FNED class at RIC. This is my second semester of my second year at RIC. I'm a secondary ed. major in History, specializing in American History. My classes are actually more interesting and fun than normal which is a refreshing change of pace. When I'm not in class I am usually waiting tables or working the bar at Mama Spumonis' Resturant in Pawtucket. It's good food with good prices so stop in sometime and make sure to leave the good looking waiter a good tip. Other than that I spend most of my time with Justin Maneca in the gym or just plain causing shennagians. Not really sure what else to put so I suppose I'll just end it with that.

Come back soon
Josh

p.s. Swords just make people look badass don't they?