My life-long learning experience 1

Spanish Acquisition: My life-long learning experience

Emily Ash
The University of Southern Mississippi
My life-long learning experience 2

Abstract
This paper describes and recounts my experiences as a Spanish language learner. It includes

details of my background both in and outside of the language classroom; a background that

ultimately led me to become the Spanish Teacher I am today. From my first interaction with the

language to my most recent decision to become a graduate student, I have laid out a map of

activities, courses, teachers, and experiences that best explain how I have acquired both the

Spanish language and the culture and how both have played a major role in constructing my

personal identity along the way.

My life-long learning experience 3

The colors. again. I cant believe we are going to be spending another class talking

about colors. This thought is my first recollection of my language learning experience; this and

my fascination with the fact that my teacher, Seora De Jess, had the same name as Jesus. I

was one of the fortunate few introduced to Spanish in an Elementary School FLEX program. We

met in a trailer once a week to learn, to the point where you couldnt possibly come up with

another activity that had to do with the topic, colors in Spanish. While Im sure we did more than

talk about colors in the 2 years the program survived, I cant recall what it might have been.

However, despite the repetitive, decontextualized, structure of my first Spanish class I credit it

with planting a seed of curiosity in my young mind about another language and culture and with

allowing me to obtain a close to native sounding pronunciation of the language.

When the funding for the program ran out during my 5th grade year I quickly discovered

that I hated gym, the elective we doubled up on to fill the time, and I spent a lot of time whining

to my parents about missing Spanish. Instead of brushing off my complaints my parents did an

amazing thing; they kept stoking that metaphorical fire of passion I had found for language

learning. My father told me learning a Spanish was going to be one of the best decisions I could

make. My mother found me a Magnet Middle School with three levels of Spanish that each

lasted the entire year and met daily. From the beginning, I was well supported. Choosing to

attend a magnet middle school also meant choosing to leave the friends I had made in

Elementary School. I can still remember the flood of emotions that came with receiving the

acceptance letter in the mail. Would I be able to make new friends? Would I continue to enjoy

learning Spanish? Reflecting back now, however, it is easy for me to see the plethora of benefits

this decision provided me.

My life-long learning experience 4

Middle School is an important time for personal identity development for all students but

it is an especially crucial time for those who aspire to acquire a second language. These years,

which include the end of the critical period and the beginning of puberty, are unfortunately

characterized by increased inhibitions caused by the strain of the multitude of changes occurring

in their physical, cognitive, and emotional selves. The complete upheaval of these aspects of self,

leave students searching for an identity to embrace. Many students establish that identity by

participating in a sport, the band, a club/organization, or in the case of people similar to me, by

immersing themselves in a specific subject area (art, theatre, math, etc.). By changing schools I

had already left behind much of what constituted my personal identity; therefore, I found it easy

to embrace my passion for language learning and to construct an identity as an aspirational

bilingual young lady.

Constructing an identity that involves adopting aspects of another culture cannot be done

without a sophisticated degree of empathy; a character trait that is just beginning to develop

during puberty, a character trait that allows us to communicate effectively with others, a

character trait that is essential to incorporating yourself into a community. The credit for helping

me to develop such a degree of empathy, almost exclusively, belongs to my Middle School

Spanish Teacher, Mrs. Nuttle. This woman who stood barely five feet tall and who must have

been my grandmothers age worked tirelessly to not only teach the language (way beyond the

colors) but also to inspire us to explore the many cultures of Spanish Speaking world.

Additionally, she superbly demonstrated what it meant to establish, accept, and value your

personal identity even when floating between two languages and cultures. By the time I

completed her classes and left Middle School I was already on the fast track to becoming a

Spanish Teacher myself.

My life-long learning experience 5

Upon finishing my Middle School language experience I placed into Spanish 3 at the

High School but decided to retake Spanish II instead. Freshman that year had been moved to a 9th

grade center and again I found my desire to learn a foreign language defining who I was as a

student. I was bused to the main campus every day at lunch in order to take the level II class;

something that made me different from my classmates. I was able to make friends with upper

classmen. I was able to avoid the pervasive negativity that often plagues Spanish I classes. And

most importantly I was able to start building a sense of affinity with the Spanish speaking

community since my absence from lunch room and after school drama had generated a fair

amount of social distance between myself and those in my graduating class. I soon found myself

with a boyfriend from Puerto Rico and several Spanish speaking friends.

Looking back, there shouldnt have been too much prohibiting me from quickly acquiring

Spanish. Unfortunately, language was not something that came easily to me and even when

surrounded by friends fluent in the language I rarely attempted to use my language skills.

Honestly, I wasted valuable years and opportunities to truly master the language and establish

my bilingual identity. Although I have no one to blame but myself for the missed opportunity, I

can attribute some of it to two distinct, and unrelated, obstacles: being introverted and classes

that lacked communicative practice activities.

My days in class were spent taking daily vocabulary quizzes and filling in worksheets. It

wasnt until Spanish IV that I was finally asked to produce spoken language; I was terrified.

Since becoming a teacher therefore I have been careful to include oral activities from day one in

every level I have taught. I have also been careful to exclude worksheets unless direct

remediation is needed since for me they brought a false sense of ability. Fortunately, the endless
My life-long learning experience 6

worksheets did not dampen my interest in learning the language and instead served to motivate

me later in life to create engaging, relevant units, lessons and assignments for my students.

Because there were only five Spanish courses available at my high school, I was able to

complete the classes before my senior year. Driven by a desire to continue building my

knowledge of languages and to observe different teaching methodologies (at this point I was in

the running for the North Carolina Teaching Fellows scholarship and knew it would be beneficial

to my future) I convinced my counselors to put me into a French course. I still value this

experience as a formative one for several reasons. First; it reminded me of what it was like to be

a first time language learner again. Secondly; it showed me that language can be taught from the

beginning almost exclusively in the target language. Finally; it sparked an authentic interest in

pronunciation and grammatical rules governing different languages. Even though I didnt fall in

love with French as I had with Spanish, I did perform better in that French course than I had in

any of my Spanish classes. I recognize now that the teacher had masterfully kept her students,

including myself, operating within the zone of proximal development that ultimately guided to a

higher level of acquisition. Whenever I am feeling push back from my students, or their parents,

due to the amount of Spanish I use during instruction I fall back on my experience in High

School French as anecdotal evidence of both its long and short term benefits.

During that same year, I made the choice to attend Elon University. At the time they were

ranked 3rd in the nation for study abroad opportunities and required all teaching fellows to study

abroad during their sophomore year. Knowing, from the beginning, that study abroad was

mandatory gave my far from well-traveled family the opportunity come to terms with my desire

to spend months outside of the country. Classes at Elon were small and I was immediately

required to write essays, maintain discussions, participate in debates, and present on a variety of
My life-long learning experience 7

topics including complete pieces of literature; it was amazing and I loved every moment of it.

Many of my professors were native speakers and all of them were passionate about their content.

More than the classes however, the community of Spanish speakers and learners that I

found at Elon really shaped my learning during my four years at Elon. I lived in a Spanish

speaking learning community where it was normal to use the language for every day interactions.

I frequented El Centro a place at the university designed to promote relationships between

international Spanish speaking students and the students studying the language. I completed 2

independent research projects in Peru. I studied abroad for 6 months in Argentina. Each

experience helped to bring me out of my introverted shell and to shrink the social distance

between myself and the Latino culture present on campus. By the time I graduated I had been

called on several occasions a latina gringa due to my ability to blend in so effectively in groups

of native Spanish speakers.

If I had never studied abroad however I doubt that I would have ever established such an

affinity with the Spanish speaking community. Being immersed in the language allowed me to go

beyond the normal preoccupation I felt for using correct grammar to focus more on conveying

myself accurately and appropriately. For example, I learned different non-verbal gestures that

were widely used, I learned that cutting someone off mid-sentence wouldnt be considered rude

but instead shows heightened interest in the conversation, and I learned different cultural

customs such as the tendency to arrive late or to bring a gift when invited to someones home.

Those with whom I lived abroad were more helpful than any professor in teaching me to be able

to navigate these non-linguistic aspects of the Spanish. They were also extremely helpful in

teaching me the art of circumlocution. Without English as a common language I was unable to

simply pause and ask for a translation of a particular word as I would have done in the
My life-long learning experience 8

classroom. This skill, honed while abroad, has been beyond beneficial in the classroom as I

attempt to teach in the target language 90% of the time; sometimes I impress myself with the

creative and yet accurate descriptions of specific words that I generate in order to help students

understand the meaning of the new vocabulary.

As you can see therefore, studying abroad was not only beneficial in non-linguistic

terms. Without a doubt I would have never obtained the level of fluency in the language I

currently have if I had not spent extended periods of time abroad. . Unlike many of my

classmates I completed all of my study abroad experiences on my own and therefore was not

tempted to spend my time with other American students, which would have ultimately lead to

communicating in English. I was constantly surround by native speakers who were able to help

me improve my speech and my vernacular. Constantly receiving input in the target language is a

very effective learning strategy that cannot be duplicated in the academic setting. Never being

able to turn off, so to speak, the need to think and speak in the target language makes analyzation

of the different ways in which varying linguistic aspects of the language interact with each other

much easier. I found the general gules that I had memorized in my classes slowly starting to be

replaced by a deeper understanding of the language; an understanding that has helped me as a

teacher to avoid relying on the simplified explanations of complex grammatical structures found

in text books when teaching my students.

Studying abroad also majorly influenced my ultimate goal as a teacher. I no longer

wanted to simply teach others to communicate with people from another culture but instead

wanted to cultivate, as my middle school teacher had done for me, a more sophisticated sense of

empathy. The research I completed dealt with the plight of students living in the border towns of

larger cities. I often incorporate pictures and stories from those months to encourage students to
My life-long learning experience 9

break down the perceived distance between themselves and members of the Spanish speaking

community. I also use the experience to encourage those who may not want to be in the class of

the privilege and the benefits of learning a second language; a tactic I found to be more effective

when I was completing my Middle School student teaching and long term substitute assignment

than I have since becoming a High School Teacher.

Student teaching at the Middle School level was an enlightening experience, I quickly

realized that I would not be satisfied teaching only lower level language courses. My cooperating

teacher often had to remind me to use teacher talk and other strategies that made the language

more accessible to my students. It was during those months that I was able to truly see and

understand the value in scaffolding and differentiation for my students (they had only been

theories before). I also had the opportunity to experience the difficulty of adapting textbooks to

fit into thematic units I still struggle to understand why family and restaurant vocabulary are

coexisting in a chapter. I knew that if at all possible I would be modifying such combinations in

my own classroom to assist with creating cohesive theme based units of study (restaurant

vocabulary therefore has since been taught with in a food/healthy living unit).

Since becoming a High School Teacher my curiosity about the Spanish language has not

decreased. I thoroughly enjoy my professional learning team that meets weekly to discuss and

collaborate on best teaching strategies; we often have stimulating conversations about

grammatical irregularities and the relevance of particular grammar rules when teaching with a

communicative mindset. Focusing on the communicative aspects of the language has not been

the only mindset I have adapted over the past four years; I have also advocated for and

encouraged students and teachers alike to adopt a growth mindset. The phrases I cant and I

dont know are rarely accepted inside of the classroom in an attempt to have students make
My life-long learning experience 10

some sort of effort to complete a task. This strategy also helps students learn to articulate why

they are struggling, what exactly is it they dont know (what the question is asking, how to

conjugate the verb, a particular vocabulary word, etc.). Gaining this skill helps students to take

ownership of their learning while also helping to build trust between them and me as the teacher

because they know I will help them when they have questions and I know they will always

attempt to complete the task I have assigned.

Since becoming a High School Teacher I have also refused to stop being a language

learner. By enrolling in graduate school I have continued to learn about different cultures,

different linguistic aspects of Spanish, and new/different teaching techniques. I have watched

myself grown in knowledge and in skill over the past few years and hope to continue to do so for

the rest of my teaching career. I also hope that someday all of my experiences can help me to

guide others to become passionate, motivated language teachers themselves. My journey of

language acquisition is one that will last a life time and Im looking forward to the trip.