Welcome to Bridget's website for English 101: Living Multilingualism !!!!
 
Abstract:
 In my personal narrative “Crossing the gap”(Name as "Why Shit"), I tell my experience of misunderstanding the use of English by native speakers and misuse the words that cause others trouble understanding me. From my point of view, the language gap happened to me because what I learn in China is Chinglish instead of English that native speakers speak in their daily lives. I desire to learn from native speakers to speak English like they do. I am exactly the “we” people that Suresh Canagarajah discusses in the opening of his book Translingual Practice : “We believe that for communication to be efficient and successful we should employ a common language with shred norms. These norms typically come from the native speaker’s use of the language.”  (1) Canagarajah illustrates the importance of translingual in his work and expresses his disagreement with “we” people. He holds the opinion that translingual can cause no trouble in communication. He applies his opinion to all the situations while I can’t agree with all because my personal experience living in multilingual environment tells me that  the trouble exists in communicating.  In this Project 2, I argued that we should find a
grey area” between translingual practice and monolingual ideologies and take advantage of both depend on different situations.

First I look at my experience which serves as my start of my desire to learn to speak English like native speakers do about misunderstanding the native speakers use of the same word in sentences to express extremely different meaning. Then I come up with examples that the misuse of  “Playground” and “field” causes trouble when I talk to others. This example serves as an exception for what Canagarajah says “the conversation was so smooth that Block emphasizes that ‘there was very little need for repair or repetition.’ ”(Page4, Translingual Practice, Canagarajah) After further analysis, more accurately,  it’s the conflict between translingual practice and monolingual ideologies causes obstacle in communication. Then I come with examples of Buthainah and myself to illustrate the benefits and importantce of translingual practice and monolingual ideologies in different situations. For conclusion, I emphasize that  it’s sometimes necessary for us to put away translingual and learn from native speakers when we need to deep more into the different culture between languages and get involved. And when it comes to represent speakers’ own identities and cultures, we should use translingual practice. I view my work as a complement to Canagarajah’s work. My narrative complicates his work by developing his opinion that translingual practice can challenge monolingual ideologies. I develop this opinion into that we can avoid the conflict between translingual practice and monolingual ideologies and find the grey area in between to take advantage of both based on different situations.