DW 1a

My use of language in both reading and writing are so different at home then it is at school. Throughout all my years, teachers have pounded into my head the "proper" way to talk. What really is the proper way to talk though? I can hear the differences in me depending on where I am and I can hear it in other people as well. Teachers and employers have this image that there is only one way you should talk but even they do not use the same language all the time. There are even differences in reading and writing.

It really amazes me how different the same conversation can be either at school or at home. I can be talking about the exact same thing but minus the context of the sentence nothing is similar about it. The other day I realized that I have a statistics test on the same day as a career fair I was hoping to attend. They were at the same time and obviously I can't skip a test but I really wanted to go to the career fair to get a feel for jobs that interest me. Originally I talked to my mom about how I was going to talk to my professor to see if I could take the test on another day. That conversation sounded something like this, "Yeah, so I found out the time for the career fair and guess what, I have a test that day. I guess I'm gonna have to talk to the prof to see if maybe I can take it some other time. I hope he lets me do that, it would suck to miss this thing." Those few sentences sound so casual. When I asked the professor if I could take the test another time the conversation sounded more like this, "We have a test on February 11 and there is a career fair in Detroit that I was hoping to attend. Is there anyway I can come by your office to take it at another time?" Those two conversations are talking about the exact same thing but they are said in completely different ways. Neither is necessarily more correct but they fit the situation at hand.

Not only is my speech different but the way I write at home and school are very different. This blog post is for school so it sounds much more formally written than if I were talking to a friend online. If I were to type this paper as I would talking to my friend, the previous two sentences would look more like this, "speech and writing are diff at home and school..im doing this post for school..its more formal..not like im talkin to you..." It is easy to see the differences. They say the exact same thing but the second one is very choppy and not real sentences. There is little to no punctuation and the grammar is far from "proper."

Despite the obvious differences between language from home and school the point of the conversation still gets across. We all learn early on to switch our language depending on the situation. We learn when to use formal speech and when we can be informal. I recognize the differences but I know that both ways are okay and they can both be understood. The "proper" way to talk may not necessarily be correct as they tell us in school.