Leila McBride

English 110

Jason Lobell

10/20/2023

Peer Profile Cover Letter

1.) I think I am most proud of my delivery of Tiara’s story. I tried to write in a way that would accurately and sincerely reflect her feelings and experiences that are rooted in her languages and culture. I also liked the structuring of my paragraphs and the pattern of my thoughts combined with Tiara’s thoughts throughout the profile. 

2.) I employed a lot of verbatim quotes and paraphrased sentences directly from the interview I had with Tiara. I did this to directly connect the audience of this peer profile to what Tiara felt and what her narrative was speaking to. I also used extensive descriptions to give the reader a better rationalization and understanding of Tiara, her language, and her writing. 

3.) Writing this profile encouraged me to learn more about my peer’s life and experiences on a more intimate level. I was able to view her narrative through a much more refined lens and see how specifically her family and her determination were key when dealing with being bilingual and how she put it to use. Additionally, I was able to see how someone else’s linguistic experiences are both different and similar, in particular ways, to mine. Despite being from two different cultures I was able to connect to Tiara’s experiences, which made me think about how different yet universal a lot of experiences with language can be to people.

4.) I believe the audience for Tiara’s narrative might be her family, to show them her pride and gratitude for their support. As well as anyone who is struggling with being bilingual to show them that if they are determined enough they might be able to create a business of their own or something similar. I think the audience for my peer profile could and/or should include anyone curious about the benefits of being bilingual and what serves as good motivation to implement and use bilingualism in their lives. I believe the narrative provides the audience an opportunity to experience Tiara’s pride in embracing her identity by maintaining her mother tongue whilst also assimilating into a new culture. This is an empowering example and stands as a model for many children who are in her position. I think this can be drawn from Tiara’s narrative as well as throughout my profile. I think I would also want Tiara to read it, just to know if I portrayed her thoughts well and what her thoughts were in general. 

Final Peer Profile of Tiara Maldonado

Tiara Maldonado is a first-generation student, born to an immigrant family, with both parents being from the Dominican Republic. Family has been and continues to be one of the most important parts of Tiara’s life. From a young age, her mother encouraged her and her sister to master English and incorporate it into their home life, combined with Spanish. Spanish continues to be a tether that connects her with her family to this day. 

While Tiara says she uses predominantly English nowadays, she still gravitates toward Spanish whenever she is in the presence of her grandmother, as “she strictly only speaks Spanish”. Growing up, both of her parents had to work lengthy hours, and during this time she would be in the company of her grandmother, who only strengthened her roots in the Spanish language. Despite her mother’s limited knowledge of English in Tiara’s early life, her mother strived for Tiara’s adoption of the English language. Not only did she do this for Tiara but for herself as well; building and strengthening Tiaras’s bridges with both Spanish and English at the same time. 

This being the case, Tiara has felt more supported by her family in her journey with language as opposed to having to face it more independently. However, the encouragement and dedication from her mother are most notable. Even at times “when it was hard to maintain both languages at the same”, and when her Spanish diminished, her mom and family were there to help her revive it.

Even though in recent years Tiara uses English more commonly, there are still phrases in Spanish that just do not feel as right in English, such as: “¿cómo estás?” and “¿bien y tú?”. Conversation starters in Spanish flow more naturally for Tiara and she is “more comfortable” starting conversations in this way. 

Both English and Spanish have a place in Tiara’s heart and life, much like the rest of her family. While there were struggles for herself and her mom when grasping the English language and maintaining Spanish while doing so, their ability to achieve it and prosper from it, “demonstrates [their] resilience and independence”. They use both languages in striving to give themselves more opportunities. 

As struggling with a language can culminate in so many ways, Tiara further explains that at times when writing this narrative, “it was hard to write about one specific thing”. When queried she explained that she wasn’t sure if writing about one specific thing would express the culmination of her struggles and achievements while also demonstrating the ones that her mother grappled with. 

However, while this was the case in the beginning, it later ended up being a strength. Tiara’s implementation of pathos in her writing conveys a variety of in-depth explanations of ways language has impacted her. She speaks of its ability to connect her to her roots, being able to “talk to [her] friends in Spanish and be able to talk about [her] family traditions,” which allowed for this connection. Even more so Tiara’s in-depth explanations and descriptions allow us to align ourselves with Tiara and her experiences. We can empathize with her and ascribe these feelings to similar experiences in our own lives. 

Despite the struggle of magnifying one singular aspect where language has changed her, Tiara elaborated on a few. Similarly in her life, following the example of her mom, she honed those different experiences, and combined them with her independence, using it to create something valuable. Like starting her own business as a nail technician where she was able to put her bilingualism to use. 

Tiara mentions that similar to a skill, her language “comes and goes at times”, specifically her Spanish. During her heavier school years, she wasn’t able to practice as much Spanish because she was not servicing many clients. Her Spanish decreased a bit. However, in times when she has had more free time and flexibility, like now, when she can take a lot more clients, her Spanish peaks. 

Her ability to interchangeably use these two languages gives her a gateway to more clientele and a broader variety of experiences as a service provider. She is able to provide services for people who didn’t have that opportunity before due to language barriers.

Likewise, Tiara has always “enjoyed interacting with kids and saw it in [her] career path from early on”. Her journey with being bilingual set her on a steadfast path toward early education. As Tiara volunteers and continues to do so, she enables kids to embrace and foster their bilingualism too. It has allowed her to see the struggles that kids in immigrant and/or bilingual households face, with not being able to excel in academia due to a linguistic barrier. To aid this, Tiara wants to strive to be a teacher of bilingual nature who can be there for kids who need it, “sparing them from any further struggles due to language barriers”. As she explains, the gift is to be able to hold two languages in your possession.

She discusses in detail the positive outcomings of her volunteer work and her nail technician experience. With this, we can rationalize and reason with all the points she makes about the benefits of being of bilingual nature and culture.

Despite any stumbling blocks, Tiara and her family have always pushed to be independent and creative. Tiara has used this influence and support to volunteer and start her own business as a nail technician. In both of these aspects of her life, she can demonstrate her bilingualism, using it to help her and to make others’ lives easier. As well as using it for motivation in situations where she can demonstrate her proficiency in both languages. The gratitude that Tiara has for her bilingualism and her use of it is inspiring. She hopes to further inspire those younger than her, in a similar fashion to how she was encouraged.

I enjoyed reading my peers language and literacy  narratives.I think even though I was able to see brief presentations of everyone’s in phase one, phase two allowed me to fully grasp the extent to which someone has been affected by language. Especially for my partner, I felt as though I learned so much more from fully reading her narrative than I thought I knew from her presentation.

As for interviewing, I enjoyed interviewing my peer. I felt as though I could connect to a lot of what she was saying, but as I previously stated, I learned a lot more about her. It enabled me to write more deeply and personally about her in my peer profile. The only thing I wish is that perhaps there were two rounds of interviewing after finishing the interview, the first draft of the peer profile, and subsequent peer revision. I found myself wanting to know more about specific things that I hadn’t asked about. Either at fault of my own questions or lack of a second interviewing stage, I felt as though I didn’t have a full grasp of how her writing style connected to her background and identity. I knew a lot about the two separately; I was just struggling to revise and make that connection a bit stronger. So I think maybe a short second interview round could’ve been helpful in this way.

I also liked reading other people’s peer profiles. I think it allowed me to see other routes and strategies people were using to write theirs, and it allowed me to think about how I could revise and develop mine further.

I think writing is extremely powerful. I think a lot of times, when there is discourse or upheaval, writing is one thing people can do that helps as well as making an impact. When someone can write and use writing to help others and use it to educate, creating impacts, it gives a voice to those that don’t have the power to speak.

I think that engaging in writing can help educate and inform yourself and others. Engaging in writing and reading other people’s writing can breed creativity. It sparks more active mind. I think that if writing were to stop all together or slow down drastically—I guess as it appears nowadays—it would hinder people’s ability to use their minds actively.

While I do not think this can only be done through writing, as speeches and such exist and are able to reach people in quicker and broader demographics, I think that writing can sometimes create a larger impact.

Everything in life is dependent on your ability to voice yourself and be literarily engaged. I think life can prove extremely hard when you are not able to read and express your own thoughts.

For most jobs in the world, you’d have to be able to write; not all jobs, but even in jobs where it’s not a necessity, I think writing could help make life easier. In order to communicate with bosses, write as your actual job and reiterate and relay messages, writing is essential.

At the start of phase one, I wouldn’t call it struggling, but I was having a hard time deciding or coming up with ways language had affected me. I didn’t really think of myself as someone who ever had to grapple with language or language politics. However, the more I thought and tried coming up with a few bad examples and a few good examples, I began to understand and remember all the ways language politics has played a part in my life. Even when writing about the moment I did eventually pick, my memories and thoughts of different moments kept springing up.
Throughout the process, the immediate feedback and guidance through emails were immensely appreciated; they allowed me to better understand the task and how my work was compared to the goals of the task.
I enjoyed the pace of all the lessons and felt they flowed quite well together. It helped me feel closer to my peers to be able to hear each of their stories; it broadened my understanding of them and how language politics affects various people.
I would say the only critique I do have would be on peer reviewing; I think it could maybe be more enforced. I just feel that at times I wasn’t given any feedback or constructive criticism on how to make my work better, so I felt as though my work remained similar through the drafting process.
Overall, I enjoyed phase one and felt as though the workload was manageable and enriching to engage in, write as your actual job, and reiterate and relay messages. Writing is essential.

Overall I enjoyed phase one and felt as though the workload was manageable and enriching to engage in.

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