Nile Harris
Reflection #1
So far, I have only had a couple of experiences as a language learner. English is my first language, which I have been learning ever since I was born. In this reflection, I will talk about my experiences learning Spanish and Portuguese. To share a little bit about myself, I was born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina. I have two siblings (an older brother and younger sister) and was raised by both of my parents and my maternal grandparents. When I started school in kindergarten, my parents sent me to Jones Elementary School which is known for its Spanish immersion program. My siblings also enrolled in this program in kindergarten, though I was the only one to complete the duration of the program upon graduating high school. My siblings both ended up stopping the program in middle school in order to pursue other endeavors. The structure of the program included complete immersion from kindergarten through fifth grade. Every subject (math, social studies, science, history, etc…) was taught in Spanish. Then once we got to middle school, we took three out of seven courses in Spanish per year (Spanish literature, science, and social studies). Upon the completion of middle school, in high school we only took one course per year in Spanish (Spanish for Heritage Speakers, Spanish IV, AP Spanish Culture, and IB Spanish HL). In my opinion, I learned Spanish in a similar way to the way I learned English. Because I was immersed in it, there was never a huge emphasis on “the correct grammar” in Spanish similar to the way I learned English. This very different from the way Spanish is taught when you are not being immersed in it which is why I struggle to help teach Spanish to my peers. For example: when one of my peers asks me for help with their past participle homework, I have no idea what they are referring to because I did not learn Spanish in that manner. It would be the same if someone asked me to speak in the past participle in English. I just know that the way I speak is the correct way of speaking. Also, in the Spanish immersion program, my instructors were native speakers from different Latin American countries. I am very happy that my parents enrolled me into that Spanish immersion program. It really helped me develop into the person I am today. Once I arrived to college, I decided that I wanted to attempt to pick up a new language. The language I decided to pursue was Portuguese. I enrolled in a Portuguese for Spanish speakers class which I found to be very useful. The way my instructor made a connection between Spanish and Portuguese really helped me pick the language up a lot easier. Before the class even began, he told us that if we were fluent in Spanish then we already know about 65% of Portuguese. The thing that was most challenging about learning basic Portuguese was learning the new grammar rules. This s the reason why I want to continue to learn Brazilian Portuguese.
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