Canadian Contribution for World Peace
I have read Suresh Canagarajah’s article ‘ The Fortunate Traveler: Shuttling between Communities and Literacies by Economy Class ‘. He is a good writer and he has many good idea about learning English to improve literacies. In Suresh Canagarajah’s opinion, every English learners need to find a adaptive way, that will enhance their interests to learn English. Countries’ tradition is influencing local people’s aethestic standard, so many readers are hard to accept foreign writing style. As a entreprenant writer, when they faced to conflicting and competing in different communities, they will adjust their writing style.
Suresh believes that “a curiosity towards the language, the ability to intuit languistic rules from observation of actual usage, a metalinguistic awareness of the system behind languages, and the ability to creatively negotiate meaning in text are the good strategy to improve literacy”. In my heart, Chinese is my mother language, and I always talk with my Chinese friends. I’m afraid of saying something to for English speaker. When I sit on the subway or bus, sometimes I will pay attention to somebody’s conversation.
At the beginning, I can catch a little information, but gradually I feel it’s hard to follow them. At last, I feel depressed and give up. In Canada, English is used in everywhere. We can learn many grammar and syntactic from there as long as carefully observed. When we read a long article, we maybe feel it’s difficult to finish and understand its meaning. I was accustomed to translate word by word, I know it’s a bad reading habit. In fact, understand the meaning in context can accurately know what message author want to deliver to readers. I think these suggestions are useful.
When Suresh Canagarajah come to western academic community, he hasn’t get the expected praise. Suresh believes that “the exaggerated, passionate personalized style of writing wasn’t universally appreciated in the academic community”. Because Western academic community prefer to restrained and rigid essay rather than personalized and passionate essay. Their tradition and culture influence the writing style, so they are hard to accept foreign writing style. For example , Chinese people think some Chinese author’s opus is very nice, but none of Chinese author can obtain the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Because Western audience can’t adapt Chinese writing style and understand the meaning. According to Suresh (1986), the conflicts he has faced as he shuttled between his native community and Western academic community generated many useful insights into the ideological and rhetorical challenges in academic communication. He believes that ” be humble when leaning knowledge, adopt a reflective learning attitude, critical questioning of dominant practices, and contextually grounded theorization are the good way to treat conflicts.
As a entreprenant writer, when he faced to conflicting and competing in different communities, they will adjust their writing style. Thus, he can try some different kinds of writing style to adapt the audience all over the world . This is a constantly move forward success. I have learned some good strategy to improve lieracy from the article by Suresh Canagarajah, I will try these ideas in learning English. In addition, if I want to write some good essay to please audiences in Canada, I think I need to change my writing style. Suresh is a good model for me to improve lieracy.
