Advanced Essay #2: The Bilingual Effects

​Introduction:

My goals are for people to notice that society is really harsh on us, and future generations to come. I also want people to read it, to understand that languages are truly a challenge. I am proud of the use of sources throughout my paper and of the amount of thought I put into it. I need to improve on my use of scenes, and descriptive language.

Advanced Essay:

In high school, we begin studying a new language. Most teach Spanish because it is the 2nd most popular in the United States. If you already know Spanish, there are alternatives. I personally did not know a language other than English going into high school. At Sharswood - my middle school, there was one year that a teacher came to teach Italian. Nobody listened or showed him respect so he left, and I now look back and wish I could learn Italian since I’m Italian. Languages help us to be open-minded, and an article by Telegraph states many other things such as better memory, better decision-making skills, and etc.
Spanish class during freshman year contained lots of basic sentences and greetings, which felt easy. Otherwise, English class has always felt like my weak spot throughout middle school and high school, so I started to feel literate and good in another language. In A Place to Stand, Jimmy Santiago Baca emphasizes that he felt capable of expressing himself: “This whole world opened up for me and I could write the words for me that matched my emotion”(Baca). A summer had passed and I didn’t study or practice at all for Spanish 2. All of my knowledge was gone and I started to feel illiterate in another language. This level of Spanish introduced a new level of words and stricter grading on pronunciation. I continuously got frustrated because I was unable to roll my r’s.
I remember in my third quarter of Sophomore year, during Spanish class. The unit was about sports terms and fitness videos in Spanish. The assignment was to choose our own set of workouts and make a tutorial video for how to do it. I had a group who did a good job incorporating their personalities and creativity, which made our project unique in that sense. I remember us constantly trying to figure out how we would write what we want to say. I never knew how and we would resort to outside sources. She told us to “change it and to use all the words and sentences and say things in a simpler way, and not to be descriptive.” The two language classes completely contradicted one another. English was about using descriptive and unique languages, such as similes, metaphors, and other forms of figurative speech, but in Spanish, we had to speak in the simplest way possible.
Projects don’t give the feeling that students need to think about what they want to say on the spot, kids receive lots of time to think of the script. The only uncomfortable part of the videos was having to be in front of a camera. Baca admits that there’s going to be discomfort when learning a language and attempting to learn, and there will be mistakes made throughout the process, “What I learned from these letters is that it’s worth the usual ‘discomfort’”(Baca). The video is usually based on scenarios people encounter everyday. Amy Tan states that people in her life didn’t understand the things her mother said, “Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says”(Tan, 1). In class when I asked a question, I was never fully understood because I was unable to speak the correct way.
The issue is that we aren’t taught Spanish at the right age. I would still like to be fluent in languages such as Spanish. Studies, however, have shown being taught at a younger age can result in better skill in that field. Dr. Patricia Kuhl at the Institute of Learning and Brain Science at the University of Washington conducted research on that subject. She found that through the ages of 7 or 8, children can learn to speak a 2nd language fluently. The ability to master a second language gradually decreases after the “critical period” phase. The “critical phase” is a phase for children when the brain is ready to learn a language. I personally don’t believe it has to be Spanish in particular, languages are a skill that is better achievable for people when they get exposed to it earlier.
As we age, our abilities to speak and write are criticized more in society, especially if the way you speak isn’t formal, which is why most people have to code switch. This relates to how expectations become higher and higher in life, throughout high school and college. These expectations getting higher matter because it affects people in a negative way, it causes people to doubt or be disappointed in themselves and being stressed. The expectations are different for everyone because people growing up get different levels of education. Society finds a way to push us to this standard way of literacy that is “correct”. It’s easier for those who get a private education to live up to these expectations for language literacy.
If the expectations didn’t continuously get harsher or stricter than I believe we’d see more variety of new and unique personalities in formal environments instead of them being shunned because they aren’t societies’ standard beliefs; learning one’s true self instead of the persona they have to put on to do well in society. Mike Rose points out the fact that schooling needs to take its time when having high expectations for literacy,“But how would someone like Tommy Rose, with his two years of Italian schooling, know what to ask?”(Rose, 1). They expect you to learn a language with little to no experience, and no real-world application opportunities. There were many occasions in Spanish class, in which, I had a question, but I didn’t know how to word it.

Works Cited:

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” Google Drive,

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Cvq7ioloJpZGNkYTM0ZjUtNDczZC00NWE2LWEyMTQtMjgzZDRhYTAzNTBi/view

Rose, Mike. “I Just Want to be Average .” Google Drive, Google,   drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Cvq7ioloJpN2JmMDk3ZWQtYmI5OS00OTM3LTk5MDctZWMzZTViNGVhNjBi/view.

“Why Learn a Foreign Language? Benefits of Bilingualism.” Telegraph.co.uk, 19 June 2013, www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/10126883/Why-learn-a-foreign-language-Benefits-of-bilingualism.html. Accessed 10 Dec. 2017.

Purves, Dale, et al. The Development of Language: A Critical Period in Humans - Neuroscience - NCBI Bookshelf. Sinauer Associates, 31 Dec. 2000,

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11007/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2017.

A Place to Stand. aplacetostandmovie.com/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2017.