Writing Across Borders

Upon watching Writing Across Borders, I felt an increased awareness regarding the difficulties faced by non-native speakers trying to learn English, especially in an academic setting. Although I have seen the movie before, it was beneficial to see it again, as I was reminded of the many ways in which ideas can be expressed. When I watch Writing Across Borders, I feel more keenly aware of the somewhat ethnocentric way in which I have previously viewed writing without even realizing it. I simply didn’t have much knowledge of writing in other languages and styles apart from Standard English. What little I did not know pertaining to other languages was fairly superficial. While the film did not have time to give the most thorough of discussions about specific languages and writing of other cultures, I still appreciated the broad variety of differences and similarities which it did cover. The Turkish use of punctuation for aesthetic purposes seems very intriguing, as does the reader participation and subtlety of Japanese writing. The innumerable ways to express any idea is one of the things which most interests me in writing, and the film showed the complexity of and difficulties involved in trying to present ideas in a form, style, or language that is not your own.

Seeing what students found difficult or different about writing in English made me think about some of the rules which generally go unstated past a certain point in education, because it is often assumed that people know the standard forms of academic writing. Because I feel so comfortable with English, I forget how difficult it can be for others learning it. I tend to be more aware of that difficulty when trying to learn other languages. Even though Russian seems to have far fewer rules than English, I struggle endlessly in class trying to remember those rules. Mistakes abound. Oftentimes it is difficult to express things in Russian which I would very easily say in English. I try to keep in mind that frustration when helping other students, especially non-native speakers, with their writing. It’s easy to forget how complex language is when the rules of your first language are so deeply ingrained that language becomes seemingly simple. This is why I think it’s good to see Writing Across Borders from time to time to remind me of what really is important in writing—standards of synthesis, clarity of thought, and the expression of ideas in appropriate ways which the reader can understand.