Javier Pujols

Freshman Composition, ENG110.

S.E Hamlet

Research Essay

11/23/2021

Cover Letter

Writing this essay is so beneficial, thinking about it, every research is beneficial. The reason for that is that research papers just give you so much knowledge. And writing it, going over it, editing it, reading it, it all implants that information without you even trying. That’s why I learned so much from it.

In this essay, my audience is mainly parents. This is because parents have the most control over children’s environment, therefore they have the biggest impact on their language development. Furthermore, reaching out to them notifies them of the important role they have in a kid’s life. As well as emphasizing the fact that they are elements of an Environments.

It never fails to amaze me that this assignment not only assisted me in achieving one academic goal but two. The second benefit was that it assisted me in recognizing and practicing crucial rhetorical words and methods when I was writing. Being able to do so can be quite valuable in academic lectures, especially when dealing with long texts and answering questions. Being able to evaluate a text is very useful, and it’s exactly what I wanted to get out of this lesson. My reading and writing skills have greatly increased as a result of this writing assignment and the analysis that is required in the material. I took knowledge from the last essay and implanted it onto this essay in a perception that would help my audience better understand the text.

 Now doing research for this essay and seeing my goals for this class has helped me become closer to achieving them. Now moving forward in life, there will be a time where I would have to do research again on a different topic. But this gives me a heads up and a startup to doing proper research that will be useful and effective. Due to the new options, I have been enlightened. June Jordan’s use of an anecdote and many other strategies has helped me develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.

I think that this will be the most useful assignment considering the normality of research in any field of work. It has opened new perceptions, as well as going over various subjects.

Lastly, a course learning outcome that this assignment has led me to accomplish or reach is composing texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation. This is because throughout this assignment I had to import sources in an effective and useful manner to support my thesis.

Javier Pujols

11/23/2021

New York, New York City

Manhattan

The Impact of Environments on Our Language Developments

Dear humans, especially those who have an impact on children’s life, parents…

Drugs, lack of education, poor communities, and terrible influencers are just a handful of the many elements that affect your linguistic abilities and growth development. The most spoken language in America is English, it’s one language, so how can we speak it so differently? This is due to the impact on our environment, which can be positive or negative. Furthermore, this has been verified by several studies and research. The numerous diverse types of English dialects are a result of the various living situations in which we all find ourselves. After conducting extensive research, it has been established that the way we live, how we live, where we live, and, most importantly, our environment, have a significant impact on our language abilities. 

Although English is the most widely spoken language in North America, people from Texas, New York, Canada, and other parts of the continent speak it in a variety of dialects. Due to our environmental influence, there are southern accents, Boston accents, and diversity of accents all over the world. According to Science Focus, “Why do people have accents” it states “These differences in pronunciation reflect differences in the cultural history, and thus language, spoken by our peers when we learn to speak.” This brings us to another consideration: the impact of our surroundings on us. How our culture interacts with the environment and influences us in a variety of ways. Consider this: if you live in a community with a specific slang for certain phrases, you will gradually adapt to it. This is an example of how the cultural environment influences our language.

Our living conditions and the people around us have unique ways of affecting our language, which is at an academic level. Language scientist and expert on bilingual language development Johanne Paradis published, “Is Silence Golden? A Pilot Study Exploring Associations Between Children’s Language Environment and Their Language Skills in Estonian-Speaking Families.” Arguing that early language skills are predictive of children’s later language and cognitive development as well as their academic and life achievement is affected and influenced through social interaction with adults. The author explains methods to back up her argument and how she came up with it. Further, into the text, Paradis uses statistics, analysis, and tables to factually prove her point. For instance, it states, “social interactionalist view that language is acquired through social interactions with adults” found in page 1, paragraph 8. Claiming that our language depends on adults who are part of our environment. The audience the author is trying to grab is the adults from whom children acquire their knowledge and language, kind of letting them know that what they do or say now can affect those kids in the future. This is because of the impact they have on children’s language development and life overall.

Amy Tan’s text “Mother Tongue” is an excellent illustration of this, in which she discusses how she speaks different English to her mother than she does to her friends or other academic audiences. The distinctions between English dialects are highlighted. This is true since you will not speak to your teacher in the same manner as you would to your friends. The way you speak changes depending on your surroundings.

Moreover, it is general knowledge that our socioeconomic status influences our educational and language skills. Susan Landry, an expert in early childhood education, is the founder and director of the Children’s Learning Institute published “Environmental effects on language development in normal and high-risk child populations” arguing that children’s language development is affected in many positive and negative ways. One of these factors is the children’s upbringing and surroundings. Susan Landry uses a range of methods to support and back up her position, including data. She states in page 2, paragraph 2 ”Studies including children predominantly from the middle economic range have found language scores for these children to be lower than those of term controls” explaining how economic status factors in students’ language skills affect their language scores. The author uses tables and statistics from studies to support her point of view.

In addition to the impact of our economic background, it is self-evident that it can alter someone’s language and education in general. Study.com, “The Effects of Environment and Culture on Language Development” claims “Children with lower socioeconomic status tend to have smaller vocabularies. Language develops better in children who are read to regularly. A rich social environment helps build language skills” Consider this: if you come from a prosperous household, you will almost certainly attend a private school where you will be taught excellent grammar and gain a superior understanding of the English language.

 Furthermore, the author targets people in children’s lives that influence their language development, informing them of the things that they can do to a child’s language development. Landry does this by being assertive and informational about the topic.

Our language development can be influenced in a variety of ways, and not everyone is in the same circumstance. Some children speak their native language and are learning English as a second language. Their surroundings have an impact on how quickly they learn this language. “English as a second language: language environment factors shape individual differences in catching up with monolinguals,” in “Bilingual children’s long-term results.” by Paradis, Johanne, the author states, “Children converged on monolingual norms differentially according to the test,… Individual differences in outcomes were predicted by length of English exposure, mother’s education, mother’s English fluency, child’s use of English in the home, richness/quality of the English input outside school and age of arrival in Canada.” Various aspects of the evolution of acquiring a second language are discussed.

Think about it, if you’re learning a new language(English) and you’re surrounded by people speaking English to you, and you’re constantly trying to speak English throughout the day, then you will make so much progress in contrast to someone only speaking it during school or a class.

The more experience the better and that is determined by your environment. Essentially depending on the people you surround yourself with, according to Integrity, “Check Your Surroundings – Wise Words Wednesday” states “If you hang around 5 confident people, you will be the 6th. If you hang around with 5 intelligent people, you will be the 6th. If you hang around with 5 millionaires, you will be the 6th. If you hang around with 5 idiots, you will be the 6th.”- Denzel Washington, a well respected actress in the acting industry. So if you surround yourself with 5 English speakers, you will be the 6th. This is a situation where you have control over your environment, sometimes there are things you can’t neglect whether it is your neighborhood and you can’t afford to move out, or it’s your parents. Everyone has different environmental situations.

However, you can claim that your environment does not impact your language development. But it simply isn’t true, after countless hours of research there hasn’t been evidence supporting this claim. That’s because the human body can be so sensitive that almost anything has an impact on someone’s life. On the contrary, other alternatives impact our language skills. Genetics, It’s natural to us, literally. Our genetics is something we can’t control, yet it has such a big impact on our language development. Sciencedaily, “How learning to talk is in genes” states that “genetic factors may contribute to the development of language during infancy. Scientists discovered a significant link between genetic changes near the ROBO2 gene and the number of words spoken by children in the early stages of language development.” explaining how our genetics affect our language development.

Even so, our environment affects our language development on a larger scale where many things fall under the environment category, such as parents, where we live, education, neighborhood, and much more.

In conclusion, through all the research conducted, our environment can affect our language development. This can be proven and demonstrated in various ways. Regardless of whether it’s negative or positive, the environment we live in is a crucial factor in our language development.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Javier Pujols

Work Cited Page

Susan H. Landry, Karen E. Smith, Paul R. Swank, Environmental effects on language development in normal and high-risk child populations, Seminars in Pediatric Neurology, Volume 9, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 192-200, ISSN 1071-9091,

https://doi.org/10.1053/spen.2002.35499. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071909102800249 )

Mathews, Robert, “Why do people have accents?”, ScienceFocus, https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/why-do-people-have-accents/

“The Effects of Environment and Culture on Language Development.” Study.com, 18 September 2013, study.com/academy/lesson/the-effects-of-environment-and-culture-on-language-development.html (The Effects of Environment and Culture on Language Development)  

Paradis, Johanne, and Ruiting Jia. “Bilingual Children’s Long‐term Outcomes in English as a Second Language: Language Environment Factors Shape Individual Differences in Catching up with Monolinguals.” Developmental science 20.1 (2017): e12433–n/a. Web. https://cuny-cc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_1826701136&context=PC&vid=01CUNY_CC:CUNY_CC&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Primo%20Central&tab=Everything&query=any%2Ccontains%2CLanguage%20and%20environment&offset=0  

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” Dreams and Inward Journeys: A Rhetoric and Reader for Writers, edited by Marjorie Ford and Jon Ford, 7th ed., Pearson, 2010, pp.

Integrity, “Check Your Surroundings – Wise Words Wednesday”, Integrity, July 1, 2020, https://intentergy.com/2020/07/01/check-your-surroundings-wise-words-wednesday/ 

University of Bristol. “How learning to talk is in the genes.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 September 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140916112242.htm>.