Ashley N Delgado Lopez
Professor Sam Bellamy
FIQWS- Literacy Narrative
September 7, 2020
To expand on a language means filling in the different components that there are to it. Personally, filling in those components was hard, such as succeeding in writing “correct” English as some may say. “Broken” English is when people don’t fully say things the way it should sound like, I might say that that is what I had during my elementary school years.That being said, language influences my writing a lot. Sometimes the way I would like to say things doesn’t come out right so I would have to rethink it and with the use of the second language, that is able to help me improve a lot. Since writing in English wasn’t my strong suit at first (it still isn’t) I disliked it very much. But because of that I was able to explore Poetry as a way of expressing myself. Now because of that I was able to expand my vocabulary and help the way I spoke be more fluent.
When balancing two languages it could become difficult for one to become fully fluent in both, it’s hard to maintain that balance. Personally, I would forget some words in one language and then only remember them in the other language. This would happen because in my household only one language was permitted, which was Spanish, and then in all throughout elementary and middle school it was always bilingual courses. So in a way I was receiving more Spanish than English and it got to a point that sometimes I just couldn’t speak English fully and it would just turn into Spanglish immediately. At this moment I would feel really overwhelmed with assignments because everyone just expected the way I wrote to be perfect, but it wasn’t because my language affected it a lot. I used google as a source since I didn’t have no one at home to help me with English. I had to find a way to limit my Spanish so I could get a good amount of English coming my way as well.
As a result of this issue, I had to communicate with my parents because speaking more Spanish than English was more of a problem for me since I was just getting confused with both languages. The next steps I took was purchasing physical books and also borrowing from the local library. Such as The Geronimo Stilton books by Elisabetta Dami and R.L Stine’s Goosebumps. Surrounding myself with things that I was excited to read more about would have me focused and would help me pick up frases along the way. It might be weird but I would use some phrases to help my English be more fluent, I would just mimic the way some actors talked. I always found it funny, but doing that helped me a lot with my English. I believe that everything connects, improving my English also improved my writing, and with those two being improved gave me a reason to like writing and reading, I was actually able to enjoy it and understand it better towards the end.
Overall, it was a whole process to get to the point I am today. But it was worth it because I was able to improve on things that I was really unsure about. With the steps that I took it really helped me explore beyond things I wouldn’t have even tried out myself. Like I said before with poetry, I never imagined myself doing poetry, but it is something that I do freely now and it’s a way that I cope with.
