¿Por Qué Español?
I discovered a newfound passion for Spanish last year, and throughout my growth and development in the language I discovered that I’ve learned a lot more than another language. I’ve developed a better comprehension of the English language, along with the fact that I feel mentally more capable of larger and harder tasks. In the article Why Bilinguals are Smarter by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, it said, “The bilingual experience improves the so-called executive brain function - a command system that directs the attention processes we use for planning, solving problems and various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind - like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.” I honor all pursuits of mind, and this one will benefit me for a long time in a lot of other school subjects and real life subjects. I’m very excited for this year, and can’t wait to further my comprehension of Spanish.
Park Elementary
Reflection
For this project, we prepared to visit Park Elementary and visit with native speakers. What we did to prepare was get familiar with speaking in Spanish, listening, and switching comfortably between the languages because the students we were going to be visiting with were more familiar with some aspects of one language than the other, as I had experienced a few times. We also prepared and practiced questions and answers for when we first met the students. The point of this project was to not only get familiar with Spanish, but also reach out to bilingual kids and support them in the difficulties they may be experiencing in school.
I absolutely loved this project, as it really helped me put learning a new language into perspective. The kids were absolutely fantastic, and so incredibly sweet. My little was very shy, and very helpful in correcting my pronunciation of certain words that I struggled with. The first day I was there, she took be along to her classes where we learned music and had a small party where we played capture the flag. I’m not very familiar with the game, so she helped me out in figuring out the rules and protecting our flag. I had a lot of fun with her and her class, and I think she had fun too. It was a really long week waiting to see her again, and this time they were learning the map of the US, reading library books, and learning how to type on a computer. My little knew more of the US map than I did and that was really cool to see. I loved spending time with her and am super sad I won’t be seeing her more, but I had fun while it lasted. Bilingual kids have both an incredible gift and also face a lot of difficulties in their school and perhaps personal life. I can only imagine being able to think in two different languages, and how you would get things mixed up and at times not know something in Spanish, but know it in English and visa versa. Elementary school is an important time of a child’s developmental life. They are learning how to write cohesively, think scholastically, and are developing important life skills along the way, so having two languages to work with at this time is very difficult. Language learning comes naturally to some people, and others not so much. If you struggle learning a language, than school might be a lot more difficult for you than another native speaker. It also depends greatly on what language is spoken at home, and if Spanish is spoken at their home then they have more exposure to one language than the other. This experience contextualized Spanish a lot more for me. One of the reasons I am so dedicated to learning Spanish is due to my desire to travel and experience cultures I would not have been able to if not for the language, but this gives me a very local sense of the language and it’s importance. Not only did this project help me localize Spanish, but it also allowed me to hopefully make an impact on a little kid. This project had everything I was hoping for it to have and more, as I now have a great understanding of why Spanish is important and why bilingualism is a very important skill to have under your belt. This project was fantastic, and I loved spending time with my little and her 3rd grade class, all while gaining a lot of perspective and understanding about the plight of a native Spanish speaker at such a young age. Not only did I learn a lot about bilingualism, but I also expanded my thoughts on what I want to do with my life, and perhaps teaching elementary will be one of them. This project definitely had a deep impact on me and I enjoyed every moment of it. |
Spanish Skit
Reflection For this project, the groups had to research into a Spanish-speaking country and learn about the culture there. We learned about cultural foods, activities, locations, and smaller things such as how much bus tickets might cost. We had to include certain topics into the research, such as travel or hotel vocabulary words, so the research was narrowed down to certain topics. Once we all had enough information to start wiring our skits, the writing process began. We had to write skits in Spanish and draft them in Spanish so we could further our linguistic skills. The writing process of tedious and we had to fix really small errors such as gender agreement, but it was well worth it in creating a refined skit. Afterwards, we had to memorize the skit and perform it front of friends, family, and some fluent Spanish-speakers.
I loved this project a lot. I liked being able to speak in Spanish in front of a lot of people and work on my speaking skills. While I memorized what I was going to say, I felt really powerful for knowing Spanish and completing sentences in a neat order without having to stop and think along the way. This project was really great for refining my accent, speaking in the language, and being able to perform a fun skit in another language. It was a really great experience and a lot of fun. |
Click here to read our skit! |