Nashaya Lyons-Watson

English 1100

9/16/2015

Prof. Young

Don't Hide Your Voice Anywhere

What is acceptable in your writing in a “professional atmosphere”? Are you allowed to feel free when you write no matter where you are or do you need to put up facades in different places? I believe you should use your own language in academic writing if it gets your point across more so than framing it to fit a more academic setting. Considering that writing is a image of yourself and it reflects on you, it should be the true you, your true voice. As it states in the Student's Right to Their Own Language is says "A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects." Everyone has such a wide range of language why not express the different. Now I’m not saying you should go overboard and just throw out all the aspects of academic writing. Make it you but make it have a point and a structure.

 

For example college essays. They ask to know who you are and why they should accept you. But how do you answer the who you are part if you’re writing like someone else. I know when I was writing my college essay I definitely lost some parts of me. I was just trying to appeal to what they wanted to hear and what they wanted to see. What looked “smart”. I forgot they wanted to see me, because that’s who they were accepting, not my falsified writing. What is looking “smart” anyway, because you can say a few big words. If those big words have no meaning or point is that really looking smart, its just showing you can write a nice sentence. You need to be able to use your own language in academic writing so you can get across your meaning the way it was meant to come out. The last sentence stated in the passage says "We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language" I strongly believe if more teachers were open to other styles and languages of others we wouldn't be pushed to stray away so much from what it ours. We should write as if we are looking into a lake’s reflection, our goal is to see ourselves and not a hollowed version. All that hollowed version is good for is blowing the real you away like a forgotten fall leaf.