Growing up as Chinese, I’ve had the privilege of being raised in a multicultural home and visiting my home country Shanghai in China often. My parents were Chinese immigrants, which gave me the chance to explore the complex layers of my Asian-American identity. The thing that captivated me the most was the duality of being able to coexist within different cultures and experiences. From universal ideas like our bond over family and food, there is nothing more important than accepting and understanding not only what brings us together, but what makes us unique as well. As a result of my parents speaking Mandarin around the house, I picked it up quickly, which became my first language. However, when I started to attend school, I had to switch to learning English. This was a difficult transition for me because since my parents were immigrants, they did not know much English themselves so they had a hard time introducing me to the language and practicing at home. The only exposure I got of English was during school. Up to 1st grade, I was also enrolled in ESOL, which is a program to help children whose first language isn't English learn the language. This program helped me tremendously, as it was an additional exposure and time to practice English. However, as I got older, I used English more than Mandarin so my Mandarin skills started to go down. I try to keep up these days by watching videos in that language and reading books. During high school, I had the opportunity to learn Russian. I remember I was captivated by the Russian alphabet. When the Olympics happened in Sochi, I remember looking at the banners and wondering how “Cо́чи” spelled “Sochi”. As a result, I wanted to learn more and successfully learned the alphabet and how to read at an elementary level. However, because of the timing, I was only able to take 2 years of Russian since it was only offered at my high school. During the Fall 2021 semester, I had the opportunity to study abroad at Yonsei University in South Korea. While I was in Korea, I had the opportunity to take a Korean Language introductory course, which taught me the alphabet, grammar, and basic conversational skills. I really enjoyed expanding my knowledge in languages and thinking in different ways. I think it works a different part of your brain when you have to think or speak in another language vs. learning another subject in English. However, learning languages is difficult and hard to keep up, especially if you are studying on your own.
I am an insightful thinker and a visual learner, therefore I learn best when reading and seeing pictures. For example, this may include learning vocabulary with photos. I also believe that the surveys accurately reflect my learning styles because I like to think of new ways to do things or shortcuts to things that are already done. I think I should expand my learning activities by hearing as well as seeing. During my trip to Korea, I realized that hearing sentences over and over again has a big impact on memorization. Combining hearing and seeing learning styles together could help me better understand the language.
Comments
Hello Aliya! I thought it was really cool how you had a chance to learn Russian in highschool. My highschool did not offer that so I was forced to Spanish. I agree that learning languages can be very difficult and hard to keep up but I think it is amazing how you are exposing yourself and grabbing every opportunity to learn diverse languages~
I think it's really cool that you grew up learning Mandarin from your parents and also got to learn some Russian and Korean. I also relate to your multicultural background since I am also an Asian-American and my parents immigrated to the States from South Korea.