Semana Tres; Blog Dos- 393 Palabras

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Polaroid (individual): When I speak Spanish and make a mistake, I feel uncomfortable and embarrassed as though the native Spanish speaker I am talking to thinks I am stupid. When tour guides make mistakes with their English, however, I do not take that to mean they are uneducated. My minor is Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), which means that I am studying how people best learn English. Hearing our tour guides speak English with errors excites me because I am interested in how people learn English. All of our tour guides have been proficient English speakers, and listening to them speak helps me relate what we observe here to what I am studying at Messiah. This is a form of CQ action, as I am analyzing word usage, delivery, and Non-Verbal Actions, all of which described in the reading (Livermore,2015).



Postcard (relational): Relationally, interacting with tour guides made me more aware of what it feels like to be a language learner. At times I was unable to understand what the guide was trying to say to us. I also knew that the guide did not know what I was trying to say to them. This made me feel guilty for not being able to understand them as well as not being able to communicate my misunderstanding. I felt uncomfortable because I felt that I could not help myself from looking rude or uneducated. Culture Smart Spain discusses how Spanish is a very physical language because native speakers use many hand gestures and stand in close proximity (Aguado, 2016). These nonverbal cues are things I had to rely on for communication when my vocabulary was lacking.



Billboard (social): Seeing the guides as English learners, and I myself being a Spanish learner, made me consider the issue of Immigration in the United States. Even though English is not our official language, the citizenship exam in the United States is impossible to pass without strong English proficiency. The tour guides that have led our tours are very proficient in English, and they are very well-educated individuals. However, analyzing their English errors as I do in class, it may still be very difficult for them to pass the citizenship exam. It is unfortunate to think that America purposefully uses language barriers to make it difficult to pass the citizenship test. I believe that citizenship exams should be provided in a person’s native language.

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