"To succeed in the classroom, I needed psychologically to sever my ties with Spanish." I'm not fluent in Spanish, although I wish I was. I actually wish I was fluent in any other language besides English. I love language, the idea of communication in all different ways and the vast differences there are between languages. No matter where I am or what I'm doing hearing someone speaking another language always captures my attention. I am half Chinese; when I was growing up I begged my mom to teach me Chinese. My father(the white one) doesn't speak any so we never had reason to speak it around the house and my mom never had any friends she spoke it with. Whether it was that she was busy or not confident enough to teach me and my brother, I never learned Chinese. I can count to 100, say grandma, grandpa and the rest of my families proper names and tell you "Happy New Year" but that is about it. There isn't a single instance that I am happy I never learned another language.
My family lives here in America, but their English isn't the best and I will never be able to connect with them in the way that I would be able to if I could speak in their native language to them. My baby cousins who are 10 and 11 years old translate for me sometimes because as their parents worked my great grandma raised them so they grew up speaking Chinese. Most conversations with my grandma consist of "How are you? You being good girl?" then her apologizing because she doesn't know how to say anything. Your ties to your family don't keep you for advancing and furthering your education. It's all about perspective.,Rodriguez can think of it as hindering him but really he doesn't know how it would be different if he wasn't Hispanic and didn't grow up with English as his second language. I feel like a reason he was so intrigued by English and went on to study it further is deep in a sense that it was something new to him and he didn't learn it first. Where we come from and grow up in greatly influences the rest of our lives and being exposed to different cultures enhances that learning immenesly.
I agree with all your statements. I'm a bilingual kid that has grew up in a Japanese background, and I feel like my interest towards my culture is what helps me in the classroom. It helps me associate with other cultural perspectives, and even though I've been slowly losing my cultural background ever since I lived in the US, I strive to work towards getting it back. I'm currently studying Japanese here at FSU for my foreign language, and it really does help me feel better about who I am. I'd suggest that you should start learning Chinese here if a foreign language is required for your field of study. It will really help bring your "forgotten" cultural connection back to you!
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