Reading Response I
Tongue-Tied

Throughout my reading I was not surprised to hear that children and adults alike develop feelings of anxiety when trying to express themselves in their nonnative language. I have felt this same way when trying to speak Spanish. As Kit Yuen Quan puts in in The Girl Who Wouldn’t Sing, “I get this overwhelming fear, this heart stopping panic that I won’t be able to do it… My body tenses up and I forget to breath if there is a word or sentence that I don’t know or several sentences in a paragraph containing unfamiliar words. My confidence dwindles and I start to feel the ground falling from under me… So I tune out or nod my head as if nothing is wrong” (13). This is much like what I feel in my Spanish classes, especially now that my professor speaks solely in Spanish. If I don’t understand a critical word, or a series of words, from his sentences I often become lost and tune out. When I am asked to answer a question or share my opinion I often become anxiety ridden and blank on whatever it is I would normally say. I think that I can attribute this partially to my high level of affect felt in class. I feel the need to perform well, and when I cannot do this I become nervous and/or frustrated. What I found surprising and heart breaking all at the same time was the level of shame that some of the authors speak of. As a child, or even adult, who moves into a new country and is expected to speak the native language, I think the hardest thing to deal with would be acceptance. When you don’t receive this acceptance you start to feel doubtful of yourself and are often encompassed by shame. Maxine Hong Kingston, author of From the Woman Warrior, explains this feeling quite well. “’A dumbness—a shame—still cracks my voice in two, even when I want to say “hello” casually, or ask an easy question in front of the check-out counter, or ask directions of a bus driver. I stand frozen, or I hold up the line with the complete, grammatical sentence that comes squeaking out at impossible length… It spoils my day with self-disgust when I hear my broken voice come skittering out into the open” (79). In my own classroom, I want to minimize these shameful instances as much as possible. I hope to create a safe space for students, especially adolescents and adults, to make mistakes and learn from them without fear of shame. Throughout my readings in Tongue-Tied, I came to realize what a widespread problem the feeling of embarrassment, and consequently shame and disrespect, has on a students learning potential. By minimizing these instances of embarrassment, I hope to create a space in my classroom where all students are respected equally, despite their level of language acquisition and comprehension.