1 Omar Juma Professor, Rieman English 1101 Nov. 11, 2012 I really enjoyed this piece of writing.

The topic seemed difficult at the beginning; but after deep thinking of the STROL issue and relating it to my own life it became much easier. It was even challenging when I was asked to write 5-7 pages about my perspective toward STROL, because I ran out of ideas at the 3rd page. However, when I thought out of the box I found many interesting ideas worth to discuss. So I think I succeed this task with a total of 6 pages showing deep thinking of the topic. I am really relived completing this big assignment the way I did!

Respecting Students Dialects Diversity. Dialects should be respected by others and preserved by users. A dialect should be given its importance, because it is not just another weird language but it represents a whole culture. By giving students the rights to their own language they will have the advantage of the linguistic freedom, resulting in no boundaries while delivering thoughts and brilliant ideas. Its definitely Unacceptable for one social group to exert its dominance over another cited from the original STROL article. If dominance became usual, other languages would be neglected and executed. In able to mine not the good but the best out of students, teachers must have the training and the experience to deal with the variety of dialects and languages.

2 This is my own statement about STROL, written based on acquiring two different languages and living in two different countries. I will mention the original SRTOL article in details. Later on, I will be relating Kuwait and Americas educational perspective towards STROL; as well as, the way teachers are approaching this issue at schools. I agree with a lot of ideas from the original STROL article those ideas are included within my statement. What is STROL? Why STROL became so significant that us students and teachers from all around the world are spending a lot of time on it? Students talk in different dialects, which give a sense of the regions they came from. Other international students have their own language, which represents a culture or even a country. So not respecting the way some student speaks will produce the hate to learn English, because will and acceptance are the strongest factors of learning a new language or dialect. For example, being a non-native speaker I met some students who have the fear of forgetting their culture while learning English. Acceptance is required to learn a new language. This issue will delay the process of learning a new language. As studies have shown that the reason behind a high number of students having difficulties learning a new language is mostly because of the Fear that the new language will delete their identity(from an article from AECPs English book). So it is very significant for teachers to have the skill of dealing with this diversity. I feel that its important for teachers to recognize linguistic diversity, because its so central to identity.

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/5996513/STROL Imagining the entire vocab from the STROL article and relating it to my own experience, have inspired me to choose these specific words. Going through STROL from the original article gave the spark and influenced me to write about this topic, even though it was something that I havent thought about or gave attention to in the past. I agreed with most of the points and statements written in the article, because it shows deep understanding of the topic. It is obvious that powerfuldetailed researches have been made on students. Speaking of English, the writer provided the reasons behind this dialects diversity: The landlord could understand the speech of the stable boy, and neither of them worried about language differences. But when social and economic changes increased social mobility, the members of the "rising middle class," recently liberated from and therefore immediately threatened by the lower class, demanded books of rules telling them how to act in ways that would not betray their background and would solidly establish them in their newly acquired social

4 group.("Students Rights to Their Own Language." CCC, Apr. 1974. http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Groups/CCCC/NewSRTOL.pdf)

Speaking in a correct dialect or language depends on the society and each group of people has their own dialect, which seems right to them. This really indicates that different dialects are mostly understood so they shouldnt be considered wrong because nothing is right! Languages are meant to be the tool of communication, so if you could make yourself clearly understood to dominant language users, your language or dialect will always be right. But there are some restrictions, which I also agree with, which is grammar in business and education. It has a lot of benefits to have regulations because it keeps organization. In the article grammar is mentioned in a sentence it is my favorite Rules regulating social behavior were compiled in books of etiquette; rules regulating linguistic behavior were compiled in dictionaries and grammar books. ("Students Rights to Their Own Language." CCC, Apr. 1974.) Since Ive completely understood the article, I will use this clear understanding on my side to describe Kuwaits educational perspective towards STROL. Because English is my second language I will talk about my first language Arabic and its different dialects. In Kuwait, we have three different dialects. The dialect in Kuwait depends on your origins. All the people whom are originally from the gulf have two dialects Bdewee and Hduri. The third dialect is used by the people who came from Iran it is called Eemy. It is amazingly weird that nobody speaks original Arabic except Newsreaders and our Sheik (religious minister). All of the three different dialects contain mostly Arabic words and some Indian and Persian words due to trading. No one of the three dialect

5 users considers his/her dialect to be the best, because we all know that original Arabic is definitely the most correct. Everybody knows that the original Arabic is the language of Quran. Ive never heard that someone denied this fact. In contrast with Americans, most of the Kuwaitis are from the same origins, which is Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. This represents the same culture and dialect. The most effective place of learning English as a second language is schools. My English language levels have been developing through years at school. Back in my school we all had the same dialect since we share the same language and culture, so obviously teachers didnt need to learn how to deal with dialects diversity. STROL was never an issue in Kuwait. However, when I first came to America I found out that teachers were more cautious about SRTOL due to the variety of dialects and origins. English class teachers in specific face this issue. Teachers from other subjects do not give much attention. They just dont care about a students dialect. I am freshman having two English classes after finishing 4 months of English language training at Arizona State University-AECP. Based on this, I can say that English teachers are doing the best I could think of. Teachers are aware of the students rights to their own language. They approach this issue professionally. I think teachers in America are using the perfect method by giving students some space to use their own dialect and learn about their language and culture. As a student I suggest that other teachers use this methods of teaching English, because it worked best for all of my classmates and me. It made me open minded and proud of my dialect, which represents my culture.

6 Speaking of schools we all had to learn SAE in Kuwait, which seemed right to us. We didnt have any idea of what dialect we were learning. To us it just seemed to be English. We are not used to talk about other English dialects. I think SAE is the clearest dialect and in the same time it will not represent a specific group of Americans. It is just a mixture between dialects and citizens and English language learners easily understand it. All of the letters are clearly pronounced so the words are understandable. All second language learners also use this American dialect. Americans use SAE internationally in media and business, so it doesnt represent any particular group of people. The reason why I think of SAE to be the most suitable to English language learners is that there are many dialects in America that I do not know anything about or even understand. For instance, when I heard Olivias dialect I thought she was from Texas. But the other American student in my class knew that she was from Shelby from her dialect. I was shocked to hear that there are differences in dialects even from people living in the same state. Americans understand most of the dialect and which group each dialect represents. They will indicate a lot of information about some one by the way he/she speaks. America has citizens from each and every continent, which explains the huge number of different dialects and cultures. So Standard American English should not execute other dialects. It should respect those dialects, because each dialect holds within it a whole culture. In conclusion, reading and writing about a topic such as Students Rights To Their Own Language made me recognize an issue we human beings face every day while communicating with other people. I had never thought of a dialect to be this important, and may represent a culture. When Kuwaits educational system didnt give

7 much attention to STROL, teachers in America used the best method of teaching, showing a clear understanding to the issue and dealing with the diversity of dialects professionally. Someones way of speaking hides a whole culture, which should be respected. STROL had reformed my definition of a dialect from just A way of speaking into A way to show identity!

Omar, I really like the way you are thinking in this pieceyou are dealing with language, identity, multilingualism, and the very interesting spaces the exist in between all of those topics. I have made a number of marginal comments and questions that Id like you to consider as you revise. I hope that you will include this paper in your portfolio and would like to see you work more with it for that inclusion.