Part 1: Mitchell, C. (2017, June 1). How Much Foreign Language Is Being Taught in U.S. Schools?. Education Week.

Part 2: Foreign languages, NYC schools, survey, education, primary/secondary schools

Part 3: The author, Corey Mitchell, is an associate editor and has written numerous articles about languages connecting to disabled student and talented students. In the article he wrote, he compiled statistics percentage-wise on which language is frequently/commonly taught in NYC public high schools. Based on the statistics collected, he stated that the education system offers a lack of variety of languages and that different states offer different opportunities. For instance, Arkansas and Arizona have less than 10 percent of students studying world languages.

Part 4: This author is pretty credible. He has experience in foreign languages and he also uses statistics that support the claim he is trying to make in the article. Essentially, he is not like bsing his work. This article will support my research paper as it targets in increasing number of foreign languages taught in public high schools and the different percentages of languages being taught (connecting to my survey responses). 

Part 5:

“Across the map, Romance languages are taught most often in U.S. high schools, with 46 percent of all foreign language classes focusing on Spanish and another 21 percent on French. Chinese, German, and Latin are the only other world languages that account for more than 5 percent of the courses offered to secondary school students.” (Mitchell, 2017)

“A first-of-its-kind national survey sought to examine the state of foreign language education in primary and secondary schools, but found a striking “lack of knowledge about foreign language teaching and learning.” (Mitchell, 2017)

“But the enrollment rates vary widely from state to state. More than half of New Jersey’s public K-12 students are enrolled in foreign language classes, according to estimates. But in states such as Arizona and Arkansas, the survey estimates that fewer than 10 percent of students are studying world languages in school.” (Mitchell, 2017)

Part 1: Bibliographic entry:

Fox, R., Corretjer, O., & Webb K. (2019, November 7). Benefits of Foreign Language Learning and Bilingualism: An Analysis of Published Empirical Research 2012-2019. ERIC.

Part 2: Terminology/keywords:

Foreign languages, bilingual, academic achievement, cognitive, cross-cultural, benefits.

Part 3: Precis: According to the authors who have Ph.D. degrees in languages and are professors at university in this academic journal, they believe that foreign language will help individuals in many positive ways. For example, improving cognitive thinking, academic, and cultural awareness. “Results report multiple cognitive benefits of language study and bi-multilingualism, particularly later in life, including enhancement of cognitive flexibility, higher cognitive reserve in advanced age, and delay in the onset of dementia.” They also stated, “Additional results stress the benefits of foreign/world language skills relating to employability and academic achievement and propose that the accumulation of years of language learning positively impacts the development of cross-cultural awareness and communicative competence.”

Part 4: Reflection: I agree with the information these authors have concluded in this article. Especially, this is an academic journal so it has been peer-reviewed which is more factual. Most of the information stated connects to ideas/facts other people such as my language department teachers and employees have said. Learning languages can increase the chance of getting hired.

Part 5: Quotables:

“Additional results stress the benefits of foreign/world language skills relating to employability and academic achievement and propose that the accumulation of years of language learning positively impacts the development of cross-cultural awareness and communicative competence”

“Results report multiple cognitive benefits of language study and bi-multilingualism, particularly later in life, including enhancement of cognitive flexibility, higher cognitive reserve in advanced age, and delay in the onset of dementia.” (Fox, Corretjer, & Webb, 2019)

This is my mind map for my rhetorical analysis paper. While creating this mind map, I felt less stressed since I brainstormed what would be included in my essay and how it would be structured. However, I am not sure if my mind map will work out nicely when writing the actual paper…

Money… We all love money of course. A green paper that has an important figure in the “front” and the “back” with an important building/people/or a symbol or a sliver or copper coin. Family, friends, and relationships are corrupt maybe or mainly because of money. You could disagree or agree, but money breaks up bonds. But we never see the other side, money is destroying nature…

Margaret Atwood started off with the article where god was created and when Earth was all clean, green, and very optimistic imagery. However, as she proceeds throughout the four creations by humans, the realization of the non-realization begins to emerge. Money, the powerful tool we have created has destroyed the planet we are currently living in.

Money is so powerful, yet we can’t combat climate change in this world. It’s crazy what money is capable of and what the upper class have in mind to spend their money on. But for now, the Earth is not what we first started off and climate change is probably not going to go away any time soon.

This could be the movie we are watching in real time; on live.

When writing an essay, opinion writing, or any sort of writing, I like to organize what would be in my writing. For example, if I am writing an argumentative essay, I would write down multiple thesis statements that I would like to focus on. Then, I gather and list down evidence (primary and/or secondary sources) and if applicable the page number to a book. I didn’t do too much or worry about the conclusion until I wrote my introduction and body paragraphs.

Handwritten essays can be challenging since erasing or like crossing out for me is annoying, so I prefer typing my writing up through Google Document. There is the “tool” bar that corrects my spelling and grammar errors. This preference started in middle school because my English teachers wanted our writing to be printed and handed in physically, but expanded during remote learning. However, when I took AP Language and Composition and AP Literature and Composition, my teachers made us type our writing, but when the AP came up, I was like “oh no…” I haven’t been practicing hand writing essays.

I also like to search up synonyms or different word choices, so I don’t repeat the same words throughout my essay. I got these comments and feedback endlessly and I find that searching up different words on Google comes in handy.

Lastly, pen over pencil when writing and maybe even doing math (SOMETIMES). My handwriting differs every time, but whenever I write in pen, my handwriting is neat and the size and font are consistent. On the other hand, when I write with a pencil, it is like a mess… 

In my quality of life class, I was a part of this discourse community with around 10 other students to come up with solutions to our issue that we are researching about. While reading James Paul Gee’s writing, I relate to his learning practice of, “Semiotic Principle.” This principle relates to this discourse community by how while researching my issue, I came across different opinions about whether increasing foreign language across schools was beneficial or not. And while reading numerous texts and articles, I had to interact with both parties (is foreign language beneficial to high school students?) and understand where they are coming from since not everyone has the same opinion or perspective. This better helped me engage in this discourse community because I had to survey over 250 people, so by talking to the different classmates around me I was able to understand better on what this community is leaning towards and their opinions which helped me create a better survey to question a bigger community/population to receive a wide amount of answers. Through that I was able to see what the population leaned toward which helped me come up with a different solution combating this issue.

Additionally, the 10 students in my class were all focusing and targeting on different issue that they wanted to solve, so by communicating with each other we were able to learn from each other and gave each other advice on how their solution can be “better” or offering them a better doable solution. This all ties back to the semiotic principle because we also had to create a website about our issue which has to include images and certain word choices. For example, because different people view a certain word and image different, I had to choose good word choice that would make people sign my petition to increase foreign language classes as well as adding persuasive images that get the viewer thinking. Lastly, there are so many languages out there and some words may sound similar to another language. One word may be something good to one country, but that same word may be a bad word to another country, so different people interact with certain words based on the language they speak. This ties back to my topic since knowing more language, we can learn and communicate with proper pronunciation that wouldn’t negatively affect another country which also ties back to how we interact with certain words.