Friday, October 10, 2014
Chapter 12
I enjoyed reading about the learning a second language because I have a niece and nephew are half Peruvian and they experience immersion. While English was the primary language they learned, their mother's primary language is Spanish. They grew up hearing Spanish by default and therefore learned the language from hearing it and hearing my sister in laws "Spanglish" (when she would replace English words with Spanish words within a dominantly English sentence.) I was in a Spanish course in high school and I had one teacher for two years and a different teacher my third year, I could greatly see my level of understanding change with each teacher. The first teacher was Hispanic and never spoke a word of English in class, from day one, even when I saw her outside of school, it was always Spanish. My third year teacher spoke English to teach the language. I learned so much more from my first two years of Spanish while learning in full immersion to the language compared to being taught in English.
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I can relate to this post. I babysit a family with three children. The father is hispanic and the mother speaks english. She learned the language through him and through living in latin america for a bit of time with him. Now they own a translating company. The children grew up here so they know both languages as well. They mainly speak english because they go to an english speaking school, but they know spanish from using it constantly at home. I believe english is their first language though. I always found it fun to babysit these children. I loved spanish all throughout high school. I took five classes in it and then made it my major here at MU. I agree that it is much harder to learn when a teacher is trying to teach you one language while speaking another. I hopefully am studying abroad next year in the fall. I hope by being fully emerged, even at my age when it isn't the prime time to conquer a new language, will help me over the edge and become fluent in it.
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