Online Translators As A Pedagogical Tool

This essay, titled “Aria”, originally published in 2008, is an autobiographic essay of the author’s childhood, Richard Rodriguez’. In his essay, Richard is against bilingual educators, who think that children in their first years of school should be educated in their native language. According to him this education system is wrong, won’t be beneficial, therefore children should be educated in the same language as the public one.

Imagine the home of a peaceful and harmless bird becoming a shopping center. Trees are being cut down, homes are being destroyed and that simple life is becoming a chaotic mess full of disasters. In that situation the bird is expected to change so it can survive it’s new environment but will be able too? It is not going to be easy but at the end reality and peer pressure will take over. The essay “Aria; A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” by Richard Rodriguez is an amazing example of someone's world being completely change because of reality and peer pressure. This essay was first published in The American Scholar in 1981 to state his argument against bilingual education and the pro and cons of it using his personal experiences. Rodriguez did a amazing job with comparing and contrasting if it is best to speaking spanish or english as a bilingual child in america but at first made it difficult to understand his point of view.

The curriculum for English-Spanish Learners (ESL) or English-Language Learners, was created to assist students who do not speak any or little English. Angela Valenzuela describes in her article, “Subtractive Schooling, Caring Relations, and Social Capital in the Schooling of U.S.~Mexican Youth,” that

First, Rodriguez develops ethos in the area of authority, which is the author’s ability to demonstrate a command over a subject matter and to offer an informed persona. Although Rodriguez initially struggled with his adjustment into the American society and speaking English, he did not let that limit his capabilities of being a successful in the classroom. “Rodriguez’s article appeared in The American Scholar magazine at a critical time in the debate over bilingual education models” (Robinson 236). The American Scholar magazine

The reader disagrees with Rodriguez’s idea that other languages besides the primary language of a society cannot be used in the classroom. Rodriguez says that “it is not possible

For the past six years, I have had the privilege of sharing my first language, Spanish, and Spanish culture as a teacher at a small private elementary school in a small rural town where diversity is almost non-existent. It has been a pleasure to open up a window to the outside world in the classrooms of this school where the students and I get to explore Spanish culture and language without having to leave town. My experience sharing my culture as well as my bilingual skills, however, extends beyond the elementary school classroom. Prior to teaching Spanish at the elementary school level, I worked as a Spanish-English translator and interpreter at various companies, and I also taught Spanish to adults.

“Aria,” by Richard Rodriguez took his life as an example of on how the bilingual system takes effect on people just like him. He puts his life as an example to show that if the bilingual system actually works, by walking us through his life experiences growing up from an immigrant, family not knowing English, but later developing the language and noticing that he gained something valuable, he also lost something important in return. Rodriguez believes that the bilingual educational system takes “a degree of individuality” from children,(19) also explaining why his tone changes towards the end of the article. The way Rodriguez used his personal life as a personal credibility for the bilingual education, although he does not provide logical appeals which show facts that the majority think what he believes, he uses his personal life as piece of research.

In the essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Child”, author Richard Rodriguez emphasizes the negativity of having bilingual classes implemented into schools, by using ethos to increase his credibility on the subject, repetition to exemplify the intimacy of the Spanish language, and nostalgia to explain the difference between a hospitable and public language.

Each lecture has an important message for the readers. One of the most interesting and motivating readings found in “Prose Reader's book by Kim and Michael Flachmann” is “Public and Private Language by Richard Rodriguez”. In this reading the author narrates the experiences of his life when he emigrated to a foreign country and the difficulties and challenges he had to face. It is a huge challenge, occasionally people are afraid of changes and start a new life. This essay has a sentimental and realistic purpose, because the author illustrates how people who immigrate face the language barrier and how difficult is learning another language. The author faced a few challenges in this reading from the educational, social and family point of view.

Once a week Jose goes to the library and choose a bilingual book but he only reads the Spanish part which is not being beneficial for him. Jose says there is no need to read the part in English because anyways he does not understand a single word. Specialists are doing observations and exams to have a proper diagnostic for Jose. Every day he goes to another class for one hour where he sits in a computer and listens to a program design to help kids learn English. The counselor talks to Jose at least once a week to encourage him to grow academically. The principal wants to make sure that Jose is giving his hundred percent to learn. His friends are always trying to help him, Chaylem a very bright student read aloud to Jose so he can hear the pronunciation of the words and repeat them. Cesar another peer, sits with Jose during their math class so he can help him with the problems. Jose likes when the other students tries to help him because sometimes he do not want to admit in front of the class that he does not understand

The world has become a smaller place as a result of social media, global networking, and out sourcing. Due to this change in the world as whole people from all countries are working at learning and improving there English. Mexico is not exception. New school are popping up all over Mexico and students are attending both in classroom and on line more and more each year. This essay will study and present, Jorge Oscar Reyes Prado, a native Spanish speaker from Guadalajara Mexico.

Nowadays young – English Ecuadorian students are highly benefited from English; therefore, the importance to bear in mind the effect that written communication has got on English language learning process. In the same order, it is vital to address code mixing as the reason why students use Spanglish which is mixing words in their native language- Spanish and the target language English. It draws attention to the fact that learners create new words and even sentences with a blended version of Spanish and English. Therefore, this essay focuses on the review of selected authors who explain relevant aspects of Spanglish when learning English as a second language. The resources reviewed show the history of Spanglish, causes of Spanglish, consequences of Spanglish, examples of wrong morphological constructions

“Every college-bound student had studied a foreign language in high school (98%)” (Price and Gascoigne 2005), since students are required to satisfy the A-G requirements so colleges can verify that the student’s subjects are academically challenging. Colleges recommend three years of the same foreign language, but a minimum of two years is sufficient. I argue that there must be a compelling reason for high schools to require students to take such classes. Why doesn’t the “Language other than English” requirement apply in colleges’ academic curriculum as well? At the moment University of California, Santa Cruz requires college students, regardless what major students declare to

According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor http://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/interpreters-and-translators.htm employment for interpreters and translators is projected to grow 46 percent from 2012 to 2022, much faster than the average of all occupations. Employment growth reflects increasing globalization and a more diverse U.S. population, which is expected to require more interpreters and translators.

Since research methodology tells research readers “who were studied, what was studied, and how the information was collected and analyzed”(Perry, 2011), it plays a great role for readers to evaluate the provided study. Methodology also affects the knowledge that researchers constructed from their studies, and then deliver to their readers. Therefore, I am going to examine how the used methods affect the knowledge that researchers construct through examining the methodology in two set of research studies, which are “Machine Translation-Assisted Language Learning: Writing for Beginners” by Garcia and Pena, and “Our Policies, Their Text: German Language Students’ Strategies with and Beliefs about Web-Based Machine Translation” by White and Heidrich. Both research studies have similar main topic; however, each one has its own concerns and research questions. They both focused on the use of online machine translation as a facilitator of writing process in the target language, but each one examines the topic from different perspectives and they use different methods to construct their knowledge. Therefore, upon examining Garcia and Pena (2011), and White and Heidrich (2013), I found that the methodologies they use in their study have a great impact on the information they produced about the use of online machine translators and about the students’ beliefs on those programs. They