Abandoned, neglected, dejado... these are all words that adequately describe my blog and anyone who may have been following it. This is not to say that I have not been practicing Spanish. Au contraire, mes amis! Wait, that's French. ¡Al contrario, mis amigos! I have been speaking up a storm, especially since getting my current job as a teacher in a program where, like, 90 percent of my students speak Spanish at home.
In fact (odd and lovely phenomenon), I have been increasingly asked by native Spanish speakers where I am from. And, not only that, which Spanish-speaking country I am from. A woman from Guatemala at the gas station last night asked in Spanish, "Where you from? Chile?" The fact that I am even asked this question at all astounds me. Considering that it happens now at least once or twice a week, makes me realize that, wow... this is a very good sign.
For anyone who actually reads this and practices Spanish, this may help you with some verbs: Linked verbs in Spanish
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Wow, that's great! What do you teach?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I hope you still speak English in the classroom? I mean, I love Spanish to death, but the fact that many hispanics don't speak English well just freaks me out. It can't be true that in some years from now Americans all have to speak Spanish in their own country?
I teach Math and English to bilingual fifth and sixth graders. Don't worry, I teach them in English, although they receive half of their content-area classes in español. I'm trying my best to work on grammar issues that follow Spanish sentence structure (i.e. double negatives: I didn't see nobody), but I'm only one person.
ReplyDeleteWe MAY have to all speak Spanish in the future... who knows? Pero por lo menos estaré bien lista si/cuando venga ese día.
So they do get classes in Spanish? Wow, that's just... weird. No wonder many speak broken English.
ReplyDeleteI live in the Netherlands and there's a huge debate going on about forcing people to learn and speak Dutch. Fact is that many Arabs and Turks just continue to speak Arabic and Turkish on the street, on the job, at school.
Funny thing is that the latinos integrate and speak a fair amount of Dutch and are willing to improve (in general).
Well, the program I teach in is not the norm. Most kids learn all day in English. This is a "two-way" program in which the American kids gain proficiency in Spanish through immersion and the latino kids are able to develop/maintain a literacy and academic proficiency in their first language that otherwise they would not.
ReplyDeleteThese kids are all fluent English speakers (or well on their way to being so). I don't agree that there are very many who speak "broken English" as you claim. This only applies to the adults and/or kids who have not been here too long.
Kids pick it up so that English eventually sounds like their first language, even if they have a thick accent in, say, fifth grade.