Carina Wong

Professor Krane

English 113EL

5/29/25

Language Expectation: A Perpetual State of Opening the Mind

As a native English speaker, I have a sort of common sense understanding of English.

There're many rules and intricacies that just come naturally to me when I’m dealing with the

English language. Things just sound “off” or don’t look “right,” and I often never had proper

reasoning backing up my gut feeling. It just felt like common sense to match the subject and the

verb or to use the correct order of adjectives. As such, I was always confused as to why grammar

was always a criteria on papers I would write for school. Why was there so much worth put on

something that naturally came with writing?

As a student studying in an American school, I thought that a good grasp on English was

a given. In my freshman year of high school, I did my first peer review of a memoir the teacher

had us write. Coming from a private middle school, I wasn’t expecting something polished for a

first draft, but I was still shocked at the quality of the work I had to review. Compared to the

prose I was used to, this was the roughest work I had ever seen. Paralyzed with empathy, I chose

to simply give a general stamp of approval, ignoring all the grammatical and spelling errors that

made the paper almost impossible to read. I barely knew this classmate; how would my image be

affected if I was a harsh critic from the get-go? This assignment set the tone for the rest of my

high school career; I would be a lenient, kind judge to my peers by only pointing out small

mistakes that are easy to fix. While I understood that peer reviews were supposed to help

improve one’s writing, I never cared enough to help my peers because of my introverted nature
and lack of understanding the true purpose of a peer review. I thought that my criticism wouldn’t

be of much help; since they spoke English, I wouldn’t be telling them anything they didn’t

already know.

Transitioning to college, the more advanced classes made me realize that English wasn’t

as easy as I thought it was. Out of the general education subjects, English is both the easiest and

the hardest subject. While English is a language most SCU students are fluent in, each class has

their own set of criteria and expectations that come with more than just a fluency of the

language; a deeper understanding of its mechanics are necessary to excel in an academic

language learning environment. When it comes to language, I’ve had a rudimentary

understanding of language expectations. Since I grew up in America and have English as a first

language, everything just “made sense.” From this class and my previous teaching experience,

my world slowly shifted, seeing language learning as a tool for people to succeed, whether it be

college students writing for their classes or people learning English as another language. Despite

my seemingly open mind, I found my understanding of language expectations expanding to an

even broader perspective.

With my new perspective on the English language, I started my career in college. In

college, I had a similar mindset, but I now had teaching experience. Working as a summer school

teacher aide, my mind had slowly begun to open further. In teaching kids, it’s obvious that they

don’t know basic grammar rules because they haven’t learned them yet, but why couldn’t this

apply to anyone? Blaisdell (2013) had an enlightening experience as he attended a sculpting class

for the first time. He’s never done it before, and he was struggling to keep up with the rest of the

class. Whenever the teacher would come over to assist, he felt his autonomy being violated, even

though he wasn’t doing it the “correct” way. Not everyone understands things the “right”
way—even among kids, everyone’s method of learning can be different, and just following the

textbook isn’t the best method for everyone. For instance, not everyone had the same experiences

growing up, which meant that not everyone understood the rules as well as I did and needed

alternative guidance.

Another experience that aided me in my enlightenment was my ELSJ placement at the

Santa Clara Adult Education. In working with the beginner level of ESL students, I was able to

gain a new perspective on language learning. While I had a natural understanding of the English

language as a native speaker, the same couldn’t be said for the students I aided during my seven

weeks at the Adult Education center. On top of not knowing any English, people who are

learning the language as another language already have a set of rules they intrinsically learned

for their native tongue. Learning and applying an entirely new structure can be difficult, and I

didn’t even recognize some of the things the teacher was talking about! Gerunds and the simple

past tense are just some examples of English concepts that took me a while to understand what

grammar rule they were learning. Let’s be honest: superlatives and other such grammatical rules

were never really explicitly taught or focused on when we were in grade school. Sure, we had

our subject-verb agreement and the basic structure of a sentence, but the more technical terms

were never really taught because, as natives, we just got it.

From these experiences, I was a lot more open-minded than I had been previously— I

didn’t even realize I still had a wall surrounding my preconceptions on the English language.

Yet, a small part of myself still stuck to my old ways; it’s hard to change old habits. Instead of a

fear of correction, though, it became a difficulty of changing the thoughts in my head to words

spoken to my peers. Even though I had ideas I wanted to share to help contribute to the class, I

couldn’t quite grasp how to say the words out loud. DiPardo (1992) touches on this topic in her
story with Fannie. Fannie, with her limited knowledge of English, struggled with her instructors

and tutors. Her instructors were never clear enough in their feedback, and her tutor didn’t really

understand her words and the meaning behind them. I can see myself on both sides of this story.

On one hand, I was never clear in my feedback to my peers; scared of rejection, I tried to be as

appealing as possible, only giving basic criticism and bounds of praise. On the other hand, I

sometimes felt lost when communicating with others. I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say,

so I just nodded along to what everyone else was saying. I started to realize that my course of

action was doing more harm than benefit; if I wanted to help others, I would have to put them

before my personal hindrances.

On top of this renewed selflessness, the ever-expanding concept of open-mindedness I’ve

come to accept as the norm continued to grow as I learned about the racial aspect of language

expectation, an aspect of language that I hadn’t been able to grasp until now. English is a

complex language, and even native speakers struggle to get a full grasp of the language. Even I,

as confident as I was, had many things to improve upon. I realized I came from a background of

privilege, and the educational system is not the best metric of how good a writer is. Greenfield

(2011) mentions an ideal world, where all dialects of English are accepted as equal, since the

current SAE is a symbol of the institutional racism that is—unfortunately— common in

America. Just because someone doesn’t follow the standardized English I grew up learning, it

doesn’t mean that they don’t have the ability to use English.

Overall, I started my English-learning journey overly confident. I thought I knew better

than most, but I didn’t think to humble myself to be a helping hand to those who needed it. As I

continued my academic journey through college, I started to realize that language learning was

not a universal experience. My mind was opened again, and again, and again. The thing about
having an expectation about a language is that there is no definite expectation— language

expectation is, in truth, a fallacy created by the racist roots of society. Everyone has different

experiences, and there is no plausible way to have a universal standard when every individual is

so unique. What I thought of as “normal” was just a facet of the English language; society had

made me think that way. Language isn’t a subject. It’s a tool of communication— not everyone

uses it the same way, but its function is still the same. English has evolved into a political tool to

oppress the oppressed, but I hope that I can start using it as it was meant to be: a language.