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Spanish Reflection

Christine Tsang grew up speaking multiple languages due to traveling between the US and China. She was introduced to Spanish as a fourth language in school. While learning Spanish grammar like verb conjugation was difficult, she saw improvements over three years of study. Tsang feels most proficient in understanding written Spanish and Chinese, while speaking ability remains a challenge, especially for Spanish. Continued language learning is important to Tsang to broaden communication skills in a multilingual society.

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320 views3 pages

Spanish Reflection

Christine Tsang grew up speaking multiple languages due to traveling between the US and China. She was introduced to Spanish as a fourth language in school. While learning Spanish grammar like verb conjugation was difficult, she saw improvements over three years of study. Tsang feels most proficient in understanding written Spanish and Chinese, while speaking ability remains a challenge, especially for Spanish. Continued language learning is important to Tsang to broaden communication skills in a multilingual society.

Uploaded by

ctsang118
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Christine Tsang

5/12/08
Block Iota

Language Being a Part of My Identity

Spanish was introduced to me as a fourth language. It was a different process

learning Spanish than it was learning Chinese or English. Although learning Spanish was

difficult to adapt to, I am willing to learn more languages to broaden my communication

skills. I feel that being able to communicate is an important concept in our society.

I was born in San Francisco, California. But I was raised in Beijing, China for 3

years because my father had to travel for business purposes. I began speaking Mandarin,

since it is the main language in Beijing. When I traveled back to San Francisco to visit

my grandparents, I would speak Cantonese. When I moved back to San Francisco for a

permanent stay, I practiced speaking English more than any other languages. This is how

I strayed away from my native tongue. Going to school in America impacted me in a

way where I realized how important my native language was, since I rarely spoke it

anymore and English was used all the time. This is the reason why I attend Chinese

school every Saturday now on top of learning Spanish on the weekdays.

Spanish compared to Chinese is a lot easier. Some English words are easily

recognized in the Spanish language. Since words are similar it makes it easier to learn.

On the other hand, when it comes to learning Chinese, I have to memorize Chinese

characters and there are no other languages that I can refer to for remembering how a

Chinese character is written. Besides the differences of speaking Spanish and Chinese,

there are differences between Spanish verbs and Chinese verbs. Chinese characters have

one way of writing verbs and no conjugation is necessary. For example, “I want” in
Chinese is “我 要” and if you wanted to say she wants then you would just change the

pronoun and use the same verb. In Spanish “I want” is Yo Quiero, but it is necessary to

change the pronoun and the verb. In Spanish there are many forms of verbs based on the

infinitive. These conjugations involve the present, past and future tenses. With learning

the additional language of Spanish I can compare how languages differ.

Over these three years of learning Spanish I feel that I have grown as a student.

In the beginning I remember learning about identifying myself in Spanish, for example

my name and my family members and where they came from. I also remember learning

about food, speaking in telephone conversations, and learning about world religions.

What stood out to me was when we had to teach the lower division Spanish class how to

conjugate verbs. This stood out to me because I was always shaky on verbs and now I

am able to explain to others my understanding of Spanish verbs conjugations. I felt

accomplished after the student I taught told me that they understood how verbs were

conjugated in the present and pretérito forms. I know that when I was a tenth grader I

never had someone personally teach me how to change verbs to other tenses, so they had

an advantage of getting more attention towards learning Spanish.

As a student learning a new language, it is a challenge because I have to be able to

grasp the ideas of using certain words and learning grammar. Also showing my

understanding by speaking in that language is important. I know that I still need to work

on my verbal part of speaking Spanish. My first challenge that I could remember when it

came to learning Spanish was conjugating the verbs and using them in a sentence. I

always had mistakes with my conjugations. But as I practiced more with writing stories
and essays, I saw myself making fewer mistakes. Seeing improvements in my writing

made me want to continue learning.

I feel that I have grown in my ability to understand the Spanish language. My

written level of understanding Spanish is almost near the level I understand Chinese. I

am able to speak Cantonese and Mandarin, but I have a hard time reading Chinese

characters. But for Spanish I have a hard time speaking, but I am able to understand what

I read. I think the reason for my improvement in Spanish is the similarities I see between

English and Spanish. I know that there are a lot more words that I am unfamiliar with

and I will continue to improve by learning the language. After taking a Spanish class, I

feel the need to continue practicing the language because I don’t want the same thing that

happened to my native tongue to occur to what I learned in Spanish.

In our society language is a factor for communication. Being able to speak

difference languages would be a useful tool when it comes to getting a job or just

interacting with people. I am hoping that in the future I would be able to respond and

understand when someone talks to me in Spanish. Well I, at least, hope that if I get a call

again (which happened several times but I didn’t know how to answer) in Spanish I could

tell a caller that they have the wrong number and feel proud that I once learned the

language.

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