Compare and Contrast essay
The two texts, from The Winged Seed the autobiography of Li-Young Lee written 1995, and the text from the book Multilingualism written by John Edwards in 1994 are talking about growing up as a bilingual child in a monolingual speaking country.
Even though the theme talking about growing up bilingual is easy to spot in the two texts, there are still a lot of differences. They agree on one thing; being bilingual is not the problem. In Lee’s text he mentions how he was ashamed of talking since he had such a strong accent, “More than once was I called ugly. My mouth was a shame to me”. This is also what John Edwards says. He implies that bringing a child up bilingually is not the problem itself. However the social, personal, cultural or other factors may play the role in the child being unhappy.
When looking at the texts language, there are some obvious pointers that show a difference between the texts. Edward uses more factual words, for example “early-acquired” and native aptitude”. While Lee’s text has a more poetic use of language, for example “ other inflections condemned one …show more content…
Lee shows a negative tone, not to being bilingual more of how being bilingual affected him negatively in his social life. He tells us that even to this day he can remember the feeling of panic when someone asked him a question in english. “I could clearly hear hear each time I opened my mouth a discord there, the wrong sounds” or “my mouth full of rotten teeth” are only a few examples Li-Young Lee gives to explain to his readers how his own mouth betrayed him. Where looking at John Edwards text ,he has a natural tone, he does not express any anger or happiness. Edwards purpose is to inform the reader not to make the reader feel something for him. He wants to show both negative and positive things about growing up bilingually without showing what he thinks on the
The two texts, from The Winged Seed the autobiography of Li-Young Lee written 1995, and the text from the book Multilingualism written by John Edwards in 1994 are talking about growing up as a bilingual child in a monolingual speaking country.
Even though the theme talking about growing up bilingual is easy to spot in the two texts, there are still a lot of differences. They agree on one thing; being bilingual is not the problem. In Lee’s text he mentions how he was ashamed of talking since he had such a strong accent, “More than once was I called ugly. My mouth was a shame to me”. This is also what John Edwards says. He implies that bringing a child up bilingually is not the problem itself. However the social, personal, cultural or other factors may play the role in the child being unhappy.
When looking at the texts language, there are some obvious pointers that show a difference between the texts. Edward uses more factual words, for example “early-acquired” and native aptitude”. While Lee’s text has a more poetic use of language, for example “ other inflections condemned one …show more content…
Lee shows a negative tone, not to being bilingual more of how being bilingual affected him negatively in his social life. He tells us that even to this day he can remember the feeling of panic when someone asked him a question in english. “I could clearly hear hear each time I opened my mouth a discord there, the wrong sounds” or “my mouth full of rotten teeth” are only a few examples Li-Young Lee gives to explain to his readers how his own mouth betrayed him. Where looking at John Edwards text ,he has a natural tone, he does not express any anger or happiness. Edwards purpose is to inform the reader not to make the reader feel something for him. He wants to show both negative and positive things about growing up bilingually without showing what he thinks on the