My Language Learning Journey
When I was younger, I attended a Montessori school. That is where my love of symbolizing began. One day a week for thirty minutes, we would have a Spanish class. To be completely honest, I did not enjoy it. It had nothing to do with the teacher or the content, I just was not interested in learning another language. Later, as an adult when I worked in a Montessori school, the students also had Spanish class. I could see the disinterest in their eyes, as well. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that learning another way to say something one already knows how to say is not interesting for many children. Also, if the language is not used almost everyday, it will be harder to learn and remember anyway. I do remember learning “lápiz, pencil, la pluma, pen” and “báte, báte chocolate” over and over. At least it exposes children to the possibility of learning new languages.
After finishing Montessori in the fifth grade, I went to a public middle school. There were no language classes offered. When time came to sign up for high school classes, I remember the two classes I knew I wanted to take were four years of choir and all four years of Spanish. I had no idea why, but I had this desire to complete Spanish all the way through AP Spanish during high school. Maybe it was because my mom took four years of Spanish when she was in high school and I wanted to accomplish the same goal. I really enjoyed the Spanish classes I had in high school, and I really, I mean REALLY enjoyed conjugating verbs (and still do). I also learned a lot about the grammar of both Spanish and English. This made me fall in love with grammar. I am a true believer that one cannot fully understand the grammar of their native language, until they learn another language.
At the end of high school, everyone has options of what to do. My goal was to go to college, I had a difficult time deciding what I really wanted to do. I knew the college I wanted to go to, so I decided from their majors. I almost did a business major, I almost went to pastry school, but in the end, I decided to be a Spanish major. I do not really remember why, because I really just loved learning Spanish. It definitely was not because I was a great communicator, I was super shy during middle school and high school. I hardly spoke, which is really the whole point of learning a language. Once I decided to study Spanish I was all in, even though all throughout college I always wondered why I picked to be a Spanish major. There was just an internal drive to be a Spanish major.
When I graduated from high school, I started to play the popular language learning app that accumulates a streak. Let’s just say I have a large streak going, since I have played every single day since then. I remember going into meeting the Spanish advisor to sign up for my college classes, and I remember being worried I would be asked to recite the Spanish alphabet, which I did not know at that point. I wasn’t great at Spanish at this point. Luckily, the advisor spoke to me in English and it was a nice experience. Since I had taken AP Spanish in high school, I technically already had the credits for Spanish 200 and 250, but I did not want to start in 300 level Spanish classes, so I took Spanish 200 and 250 my first year of college and took 300 and 400 level classes after that. I will say my favorite Spanish classes were Spanish Grammar and Spanish Linguistics. Again, I really enjoy the grammar of languages. I loved college, and I really enjoyed being a Spanish major. I know I made the right decision. I became more confident in my Spanish skills, especially writing and listening. I also had to take a semester of another language, so I also took four french classes. I enjoyed them as well because I love to learn languages.
During college, I felt since I was a language major, I had to study abroad. I knew I did not want to be away for long and my school had a three week summer study abroad program. So for three weeks I studied abroad in Bilbao, Spain. I was excited to study abroad in a smaller city because previous to this I had traveled to Paris. I was not deep into language learning at that point, and knew very little French, and I realized in big cities, it is not as important to know the language, where everyone basically understood English (which I now see as a problem, and think everyone should be considerate and try to speak the home country’s language). I absolutely love Bilbao. It was an amazing place to study abroad. It was safe and I got a lot of Spanish practice with the locals and the host family. At the end of my study abroad, my sister, mom and dad came to Spain and we traveled to Barcelona and Madrid for about two weeks afterwards which was also great. They were really impressed with my Spanish pizza ordering skills and how to ask where the ice machine was, when there wasn’t one, so they gave us a cup of ice! During my study abroad, I also visited San Sabastián and Guernica. Spain is really great and a really big part of my language learning journey.
The biggest question I was always asked during my college days was, “What are you going to do with Spanish?” I never really had an answer, but I did decide to fulfill one of my childhood goals to become a certified Montessori teacher. I took a few years to do that, while also studying languages on the side. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to do something with languages. That is how Parts of the Language, LLC was created. It is now the next part of my language learning journey. I hope to deepen by Spanish and French skills, and hope to start learning Italian, American Sign Language, and a few other languages. This is what is next for my language learning journey and hope you will discover or continue your language journey here.