I have always considered myself to be a fluent Spanish speaker. My mother, an immigrant from Colombia, taught me everything I needed to know to communicate with my grandma, who only spoke Spanish. Being able to speak Spanish was a gateway for me to be able to connect with my mom’s side of the family. I never thought I would be a “bad” Spanish speaker, this notion quickly changed once I entered high school. Sitting in Spanish class I had never felt more uneducated, all my classmates knew all these different tenses to use when it came to speaking Spanish, and yet there I was, sitting, hoping for the period to quickly end. My first Spanish test of the school year failed. I failed so badly that my teacher allowed me to retake the test. Yes, I was …show more content…
Then started my journal entry journey, everyday I would write about my day in Spanish. After I finished my entry, I would take out my Spanish notes and correct my writing. In this process, I realized that when I spoke out my journal entries while writing, I managed to always write in a correctly structured way. I finally cracked the code. My next Spanish test came, my palms were sweaty, but I felt like after all my practice I knew that I had earned a 100. Whether i got that grade or not, I was still proud of how far my spanish writing skills had come, i was no longer a failure.I got my test grade back, and I did not in fact get a 100, i got a 91, and i felt like i was on top of the world. I no longer saw myself as someone who had a false hispanic identity, I no longer saw myself as a product of disappointment to my culture, but instead as an adaptation to my cultural struggle. A grade did not validate my sense of identity, my passion did. Every time I put my pencil to paper and I wrote in my native language, I felt astonished at how expressive my writing could
So that was the case for Richard Rodriguez in “Aria”, he expands on his life as a kid learning to speak English. And his parents not knowing how to speak English fluently. He would not like going to school because when he would try to speak English he would get made fun of. English was never comfortable to him. But that all changed when the nuns from his school came to his house to tell his parents to speak more English at home. He felt broken, there was no talking in Spanish in the house just English. From there he started to learn more English at school and became fluent in it. He even forgot how to pronounce things in Spanish after that. Richard Rodriguez said, “I would speak, or try to speak, Spanish, and I would manage to utter halting, hiccupping sounds that betrayed my unease” (Richard 319). He felt disappointed in himself for not being able to speak Spanish. This is a showing of how language has power. Just because he stopped speaking a language, he forgot it and became more fluent in another
Although, I have been a good student at school, I always have struggles doing my homework like any other student. Sometimes, it is difficult to me to understand my assignments; however, I always try to obtain a knowledge from my courses. In this case English 111, like any other course left a mark on my academic and personal life.
I took my first Spanish class in 8th grade because I knew a foreign language credit was required for an advanced diploma, but I had no clue how useful the language would become. Waynesboro is a very diverse city and being bilingual has many advantages. After completing Spanish IV in 10th grade, I was nearly fluent in the language because I used it daily on the soccer field with my nine Hispanic teammates. This especially came in handy when competing against teams with no Spanish speakers. Fast forward two years to today, and I still have the conversational aspects of the language engrained in my brain. At Chick-Fil-A I work with a Hispanic lady named Carolina who does not speak any English, and I am her best friend at work
Through the process of acquiring knowledge in this course, I have learned countless aspects about my own self. Amidst the very challenges I faced, the act of communication, management, and leadership, are among them. Being bilingual, my communication skills are on par yet at times hinder me from articulating my intention precisely as I have meant them. With every socialization I have made, I have striven to do better and to be better. I have learned that although you may consider yourself “fluent” in a foreign language, there are phrases or intonations to which come across as something entirely different from what you intended to say causing the message to be lost between the barrier of the two communicators.
As a child, I had to navigate from an English-speaking classroom to a Spanish-speaking home. At eight in the morning I was given instruction in English by my professors at school. After three in the afternoon at home, I engaged in Spanish conversation with my mother, father, and siblings. When the summer vacation came around, it was back to speaking Spanish only, and then I regained the Mexican accent that had faded away during the school year. My experience learning English was different from what earlier Spanish-speaking generations in the United States dealt with.
Growing up in a Hispanic household the first language that you learn should be Spanish, right? This was not the case for me, having two older sisters that were already in school learning English and always using English around me and my family. English was my first language, this helped with my early youth in picking up English at school faster. Learning English first was detrimental to learning Spanish, I learned informal Spanish called Spanglish. I would mix up English words with Spanish words and made it harder for me to construct vocal sentences. Being a Hispanic is difficult if you know limited Spanish, it was important for me to dedicate time to learn Spanish.
I had always been a shy kid. I was always fearful of judgement and now my voice gave it away. I began to rely heavily on my parents for means of communication when the situation involved me having to speak in Spanish. I could not bear to see the look of confusion on people 's faces when I spoke Spanish, so I turned to my parents who were both fluent in Spanish. I was frustrated and fed up. It was one thing to occasionally speak Spanish but without it you couldn’t survive in Miami. I couldn’t wrap my head around such logic. I was struggling to make it by with so little Spanish while others were graduating high school with no English. This angered me so much I began to resent Spanish speakers.
“I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess - that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler. I remember being sent to the comer of the classroom for "talking back" to the Anglo teacher when all I was trying to do was tell her how to pronounce my name” (Anzaldúa 34). She showed that she was punished directly for speaking her native tongue. Ultimately, enhancing the reader’s ability to empathize with her on what she has gone through. However, with this empathy lies a divide by the use of her personal experience. Using personal examples allows her to build her credibility within her audience because she uses her experience to shine a light on the hardships she and other bi-lingual Spanish speakers encountered daily. She, like many others, lived through “taming of her wild tongue” while trying to get the “Anglo Whites” to understand how being forced to speak another language perfectly because they didn’t want to accept the difference. There is the urgency of adaption for the Hispanics to speak English fluently and without an accent so they were
When I think back to this, it reminds me of Marin’s article when she stated, “speak better English than the gringo, so that he could not ridicule [them] the way they had been ridiculed in school and work. ”(Marin) I remember this is because our experiences were the same but instead the opposite. Her parents wanted her to speak better English than Spanish. In my case, it was the opposite.
Community One: Spanish Schooling My first community is my Spanish schooling that I was engaged in from elementary school to sections of my high school education. Since this Spanish education took place in a homeschooling setting, my parents were my teachers the majority of the time. I also attended classes that were held in brick and mortar schools that would give me access to different teachers occasionally. The majority of my textbooks were in Spanish, and I was taught Spanish and English for grammar classes.
Summer vacation, and school ends for about three months, and then you have as much fun as you can, then back to school… right? Well I had to go to summer school, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Everything was going fine, I had a job after summer school, and that was going fine as well. They say that summer is supposed to be fun and exciting, and it usually is for me and my family. However in July my father started coughing up blood. My father usually doesn’t make it his top priority to go to the doctors, so he waited about four weeks until he really didn’t feel good.
When I was a child my dad, and my grandparents taught me how to speak Spanish before I could learn how to speak English. As I continued to learn more and more words, Spanish became my first language, I spoke it fluently, and English came second. When I was ready to start Pre-K, my dad taught me to write in English other than in Spanish. It was hard to learn how to write my letters without knowing them in English and only in Spanish. I would confuse my E’s
Learning a new language isn’t always easy. It has it’s up and down moments but once I learned that new language I felt accomplished and a lot of new opportunities open for me. My point is that learning English for me wasn’t easy, but once I learned English, I was able to help out my parents more and a bunch of new doors opened for me. You can say by knowing English I had a little more power now at home because they depended a lot on me now but it also felt great just to help them out with their English.
One goal that I have clearly established is to learn Spanish properly. I have always struggled with learning languages, but I also never put special effort into improving my abilities until recently. More recently I have been attempting to take more steps that would lead me to be more likely to learn Spanish. The first step I took was paying more attention in class. I work hard when I am working, but I get distracted fairly easily. I decided to work at overcoming that as to make myself more likely to succeed in the classroom. Secondly, I had a very bad habit of not doing my homework in my language classes. Using just those two steps I was able to greatly improve my scores and abilities in my Spanish class. Generally, I would either fail my
Knowing nothing about the language and then suddenly having to learn how to read and write gave me big obstacles to overcome. During, elementary school through 6th grade I went to a bilingual school. We had a month of all English courses and then one month of all Spanish courses rotating along the school year. During, this time I learned how to read and write in English. Also how to use past, present, and future tenses while incorporating them into sentences. Not only was this difficult for me, but also having to read in front of classmates was embarrassing. Every time I would have to read out loud I could feel my face get hot and red. However, not only did I have to learn a new language and have an accent with it, but I also had to face the criticism from others who knew the language and had no struggle with