Language Autobiography

Yesika Castillo 10/07/16

I was born in Mexico with a mother that spoke only Spanish and a father that spoke both

English and Spanish. I lived in Mexico until the age of four, then I moved to the United States. We

moved to the United States so that our family could be reunited with my father, who already lived

there. Growing up, I only spoke Spanish, although I spoke Spanish all of the time it was not very

good. I wanted to be able to communicate with my family, so I was motivated to improve my

Spanish speaking skills. Once I started school I began learning English. I struggled to learn the

language because I only heard English at school and never at home. I was encouraged by my

teachers and father to learn another language. My father valued education and felt being bilingual

was important. There have been challenges that I have had with my Spanish. Some of the difficult

challenges for me have been the accents and learning how to spell some words correctly. Some of

my successes in learning Spanish have been being able to read and write the words in their correct

tense.

Throughout the years, I have faced many experiences that have helped me appreciate the

culture of my target language and I have been able to better understand the Spanish culture because

I know the language better. Without being exposed to Spanish, I would not know how important

traditions are to my Spanish culture. By knowing more of the Spanish culture, I was able to find

out that the Spanish do not take things seriously and that their body expressions make everything

seem like its all fun and games. By listening, speaking, reading and writing I have been able to

increase my understanding of my target language. I now better understand what the language

consists of and the key points.

 In my Spanish classes, I have learned many new experiences about my target language. I

have been able to gain a greater perspective about the Spanish culture through previous studies.

Through former studies, I have learned about Spanish poets, like Ruben Dario, Frida Kahlo and

Diego Rivera. Throughout my 4 years of high school, I have taken a foreign language class. By

taking a Spanish class every year, I greater expanded my knowledge about everything that I should

know about the Spanish culture and language.

In the English and Spanish language there are similarities and differences. A similarity is

the conjugates. In the Spanish language, there are words that are spelled similar to the way that

they are spelled in the English language. Two differences are the exclamation and interrogation

points. When writing a sentence in Spanish, if it is an exclamation or question you always need to

put an inverted exclamation or interrogation point at the beginning of the sentence. In the Spanish

language, most of the words have accents, but in the English language there are no words with

accents. Accents are important because they make the words sound differently. Another difference

is the Spanish and English alphabet. In the Spanish alphabet there is one more letter and that is the

. Before there were four more letters. The ch, ll, rr and , made up the alphabet, but were

removed and although they are not part of the Spanish alphabet they are still used in some words.

My life was enhanced by participating in different multilingual communities. I was able to

use more of my Spanish language when I have helped out in translating to students and parents as

a teacher assistant and at various school activities. Learning another language enriched my life

because I was able to help people who did not know another language. I am also able to

communicate with new people. I am confident that I will continue to use multilingualism with my

family, at a job, and when traveling to new places and meeting new people.