Blogs

In the fall of 2020, I began doing research for Dr. David Salisbury in the department of geography and the environment. He specifically focuses on regions of Peru and Brazil in the Amazon. I started out mapping roads for him and at most Google translating the names of shapefiles. I would sit and blink while my professor spoke rapid-fire Spanish and Portuguese with on-the-ground collaborators about our maps.

I then moved on to my own research project mapping COVID-19 among Indigenous communities. This involved working in a research team with my professor and two other professionals, one of which only spoke Spanish. From that point forward, anything involved in my data analysis was translated into Spanish. I couldn’t hold a conversation with anyone, but I started trying to comprehend the meetings more and I began to know some of the key phrases from the excel sheets and data visualizations that were all in Spanish. It was such a vastly different approach to a language than any that I had previously taken.

I took an introductory Spanish course over one summer in an attempt to better understand what was going on in meetings, but I needed more practice listening and speaking than what we did in a class. That was when I realized that I would not be able to learn these languages the way that I thought I needed to through any standard path because they were not as focused or applied. However, I also knew that I was not someone who could learn a language on my own. I am someone built for setting aside a specified time for something and I also am more motivated by collaboration. These are some of the reasons why this program really appealed to me.

This past summer we, as a student research group, traveled to Peru for a workshop about environmental issues in the Peru/Brazil borderlands of the Amazon that we study. We got there and I was thrown into a language blender with Spanish, English, and Portuguese coming at me from all sides. Most of it I didn’t understand. A lot of times I needed someone to translate or I would type things out on my phone. However, an amazing part was how much people were willing to teach me or communicate in broken Spanish or Portuguese. I learned an insane amount because I had people willing to engage with me.

I say all of this because I now have a research collaborator who only speaks Portuguese and after hearing about this program I think it could be what helps me to meet my goals of conversation, comprehension, and investigation when it comes to Portuguese, particularly in my area of study. One of my main goals as a part of this program is to speak as much Portuguese as I can. It is the most challenging aspect of any language to me, but I also think it pushes me to be more competent in that language as well. I also hope to put a specific focus on communicating in the context of the research I am doing. I recognize that I do not even know foundational Portuguese, but I think being able to communicate with my collaborator will be a good initial motivation.

My first experience with a foreign language was learning German throughout middle school and high school. It was not the most popular language to learn, which I ended up loving. By eighth grade we had a cohort of people who had studied German all 3 years of middle school. It was our little community of (self-described) oddballs that continued until we graduated from high school. I think one of my favorite parts of those classes were how much our community enjoyed humor. We would be assigned skits about going to the grocery store or something equally as simple and it was a competition to see who could have the class rolling on the floor with laughter, while saying all of the German with a straight face. It was through this environment that I realized how much I loved collaborative language learning. I am now seeing how this manifests in the form of a high Social score on the Multiple Intelligences Survey and being an evaluative learner in the FIRE model. All of the statements in the E column spoke to me and made sense in the context of my learning experience with German and other languages as well.

From when I was very little I knew I was a visual learner. I wasn’t the best listener, I was distracted easily, and I needed to create my own focus in order to hone in on anything. If I could digest something put in front of me myself, I was able to comprehend it much better than anything explained to me, particularly without a visual cue. I also have always known that I am a much better writer than speaker, no matter what the language. I particularly struggled with this in German. However, I also think that our teachers were always kind to us, allowing us to have a script or know prompts so that we were not forced to speak off the cuff. However, this also ensured my speaking skills did not improve much over the 7 years I learned German.

The other language I have had experience in is Spanish. At UR, I joined geography research about the Amazon. As I became more and more invested in the less technical aspects of the research and particularly as I began my own research project, it became apparent that my lack of language skills in Spanish and Portuguese were a barrier. I had picked up key words and phrases along the way and could guess at what was being said in meetings at times. It was my first time learning a language for practical, applied reasons. I was frustrated I couldn’t take a Spanish course about sustainability, geography, and the Amazon! This experience made me realize that languages are key if I want to continue research abroad and that the way to learn a language is exposure to native speakers and having a goal of what you need to interpret and converse about. That is why I am excited for the structure and autonomy this course provides in regard to language learning.