Bicultural Vida

“I’m never brining any of you any more encargos,” my mom complained as I help her lift the two huge suitcases you see in the picture above into my car’s trunk at Denver International Airport yesterday. She just got back from a six-week long trip to Peru and both my sister and I bombarded her with our lista de encargos even before she left. In fact, mine kept on growing while she was already there and I remembered I alsoRead More ...

Secondo’s days of excessive repetitive motions involving toy vehicles are for the most part over, but he still has a tremendous passion for airplanes, buses, cars and trucks. The centerpiece of the boys’ room is a rug made up of an intricate design of roads, runways and parking spaces. It gets a lot of use, so I finally remember to throw it in the washing machine one day. I hang it up to dry, though, and forget to bring itRead More ...

Something truly amazing happened yesterday! As I’ve mentioned before, Vanessa has been learning to read in school and I’m quite impressed by how well she’s doing and how quickly she’s perfecting her skills. Not to mention the truly incredible thing she’s doing by transferring those reading skills into Spanish all by herself. Vanessa likes to read to her little brother, but last night, he chose a book in English and asked her to read it. She knows perfectly well that SantiagoRead More ...

Recently, I’ve been thrilled to notice an increase in Marisol’s Spanish vocabulary. Now, this doesn’t mean she is fluent in Spanish —we are most definitely raising Spanglishbabies in our family. It’s been a challenge to even get this far because I am the lone Spanish speaker in the home, and I’d call myself fluent only in limited settings. I am most definitely fluent in “baby Spanish:” Vamos a comer. ¿Quieres leche? ¿Dónde está el gatito? ¿Tienes hambre? But ask me to talk to you in Spanish about myRead More ...

Part of my plan for raising bilingual children has always included teaching them how to read and write in Spanish. I find it very discouraging that so few elementary schools offer foreign language education. It is shocking considering all of the recent studies that demonstrate the cognitive benefits of being bilingual. To make up for this shortfall in the public education system, my sons will have Spanish classes with me at home. I am doing some part time home schoolingRead More ...

I think I have discovered the one disadvantage of bilingualism. Because I often tutor in public places (bookstore, Starbucks), I have a lot of people-watching opportunities. What I am never prepared for, though, is the amount of people-listening that my brain wants to do. I can be teaching in English – usually describing how to approach an SAT problem – and also paying attention to the Spanish conversation at the next table. It is to be expected that you wouldRead More ...

Newly pregnant with our first child, there were so many hopes and dreams I aspired to give my daughter: a secure sense of self, confidence in her womanhood and the ability to define her cultural identity in whichever way she chooses. Being of mixed races and cultures, I wondered who would win in the battle of personal identity definition…Alina or society at large. With that in mind, before Alina was born, I decided she would be bilingual in order toRead More ...

Language transfer, when someone applies knowledge from their native language to a second language, is typical in budding bilinguals like my daughter. Although in her case, she really does a lot of the transferring the other way around, from what I like to think as her second language (English) into her native one (Spanish). Of course, it could be argued that in a case like hers, where she has been exposed to both languages pretty much since birth, it’s hardRead More ...