Personal Narrative: Is It Contagious?

Purpose: To highlight the difficulties students have at school and at home when it comes down to learning a language which they aren’t acquainted to and the consequences of such, depending on their social background.

Nowadays many students from my country Brazil consider the opportunity of studying abroad in another country. I am a student athlete from Brazil and I am living my dream of attaining college in the United States. The idea of living in a foreign country, where you will encounter different places, make new friends, and live a different way of life, sounds exciting and fun at the beginning, but those expectations are not always met. The story “Always living in Spanish” is about a Chilean girl who loves her country. However, due to the violent environment, Marjorie and her family decide to go to America, hoping to live a safer life. Many foreign students, such as Marjorie in “Always Living in Spanish”, experience difficulty integrating in another society because they have difficulty expressing themselves in that society´s language. This issue also evolves problems in adapting to another culture and living a normal daily life.

The interviewee for my project, Andres Alejo, is currently a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. He was so excited to express his opinions for this interview, as he grew up traveling back and forth between two cultures. Due to his father’s job, he traveled between the United States and the Dominican Republic until he was in fifth grade, when his family returned to the Dominican Republic to stay. During his time in the United States, his time was divided between Mt. Vernon, New York and Miami. Andres eventually returned to the United States to study Piano Performance at Boston Conservatory. His experience with learning English was not as difficult for him, since he started learning during his formative years. He mentioned that his

Learning a new language seems to have only positive effects. However, for a Mexican American, accomplishing this goal brought him drawbacks in the interaction with his family. In his essay, ‘’Public and Private language,’’ Richard Rodriguez describes the difficulty in learning a new language and the sacrifice he makes to accomplish his goal. Richard Rodriguez shares the difficulty for older people, as they learn a new language; however, for younger generations is easier to learn a new language. Also, the new language creates a lack of communication for Richard Rodriguez.

After that day, I went out of my way to understand the weight that “Brazilian” carried. I immersed myself in Portuguese. At that age, I understood some bits and pieces of it, but I was nowhere near conversational. I soon began to seek out as much Portuguese as I could get my hands on and the most reliable resource that I had were my mother’s daily telenovelas. I was gradually spending more and more time on the tv building up

What I experienced in speaking 7 different languages is that there are certain things that are just untranslatable between languages. In order to convey the same thought or message in different languages, I can’t directly translate word to word instead I have to use words that are appropriate in

This is a report about which foreign languages Brazilians learn and how and why they do that. The purpose is to present some recommendations for improving language learn in Brazil and to exchange experience with people from other countries who are studying as well.

As I nervously walked off the bus, I looked towards my new family who beckoned me towards them with signs and open arms. After hearing the Spanish-sounding blur coming out of my new sister's mouth, I could only produce a blank stare in response. I immediately came to the realization that living in a Spanish-speaking culture would not be as easy as I had expected, and my ten years of classroom Spanish would not be enough. This was a living language that I would have to learn and adjust to. Despite the preparation undergone for this trip of a lifetime, I quickly became overwhelmed living with a host family as an exchange student for six weeks in Paraná, Argentina. The mental strain of this language immersion alone would have been enough, but

As a new student in a foreign land I had to comply with the norms which were almost alien like to my adolescent mind. Some of the major norms that separated Mexico and the U.S. included speaking and writing English. I was able to slowly adapt over the years at school by being enrolled in an all Spanish class until fourth grade where I was moved onto a bilingual class and then finally fifth grade when the school concluded that I was ready for an all English class. This was an accomplishment for both my family and myself in that it showed progress, adaptability, and resiliency because I became bilingual which made me

In 2013 I moved to the small city of Zamora, Spain to start a conversation assistant job with a government-run academy. I moved there without a comprehensive knowledge of their contemporary culture and I hadn’t used the language since my freshman year in Costa Rica. During my first days in Zamora, I had to find housing and set up a bank account before my first classes the following week.

“It was in 2nd grade that I had a teacher whom I try to model myself after to this day. This teacher constantly reminded me of how special I was for being able to fluently speak two languages” (Nieto, 2015, p. 65-66).

Language, in its simplest form, provides humans a way to communicate with each other to express needs, desires, and emotions in general. Without even thinking about it, speech is a tool that we use every day at work or in casual conversation, and that our lives would be completely different without. Humans learn a first language (L1) around the age of 1, and there is a sort of innateness for it to be acquired—our brains are ready for it. However, acquiring a second language can often times be a different, and more difficult process for anyone who attempts to do so. But while it may be challenging, the benefits of bilingualism are seemingly endless as it enables one to communicate with a whole new group of people as well as helps in brain development in children and adults. It truly opens up a door of possibility. So what is it about the process of learning a new language that makes it so different?

At age five I knew all the letters in the alphabet, I knew how to count up to a thousand, I knew simple addition and subtraction, yet I was still the least prepared before my first day of school. Before starting kindergarten, all I spoke was strictly Spanish. To this very day I still don’t quite know why I was never taught English growing up considering the fact that my grandfather was self-taught in English and even passed his citizenship test in English as well. My infantile innocence is what kept me from realizing how not being able to speak English was not only going to be a challenge for me, but for both my teachers and family as well.

To speak two different languages is such an impressive trait to have. One of my best friends is bilingual and she amazes me; her name is Evelyn Grajales and I met her four years ago. I was eleven when we first met and she was ten. Evelyn lives in Montevideo, Uruguay which is one of my favorite places. I made the long and dreadful trip back there when I was thirteen. Going back was like a gigantic family reunion. I went back for the third time just a month ago, this time being fifteen years old. In a peculiar way, it feels like we have grown up together. Getting to visit her, her inspiring family, and prodigious church has been one of the most encouraging things in my life.

However, there are things that I feel more confident talking about in English rather than in Spanish, which to me is weird. This article aims to explain the relationship between feelings, words, languages and the reaction of your brain, memory and even facial muscles to interactions in two different languages, which makes me feel identified. I am also very interested in neurolinguistics and what happens to our brain when we learn new languages and this article has given me the information I was looking for.