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I did not attend preschool, but enjoyed a mother who was committed to my language
development from an early age, teaching me to read and write before beginning my formal
education in Catholic school. The private, undiversified religious school environment placed
strong emphasis on formal, traditional methods for English language acquisition, such as with
the use of vocabulary drills and extensive reading and writing assignments, which in turn limited
the social dimension of acquisition by using a didactic approach to teaching throughout the vast
majority of classroom time. Even so, I soon fell in love with the study of language, and my
fascination with the human linguistic journey has only grown greater with time. I did not have
the opportunity for second language development until my first year of high school, in which I
chose to take Spanish (as opposed to French). Although only two years were required by the state
of Florida, I ended up enthusiastically taking classes for all four years. Although I loved learning
in my first language, the even more Romantic nature of Spanish led me to later take courses in
Latin, French, Portuguese and Italian throughout the course of my secondary career.
Originally, much of my experience with acquiring my second language was done in a
social context, as I had a boyfriend of many years whose first language was Spanish. Spending
time with his family (directly of Cuban descent) provided me with the chance to quickly develop
some conversational proficiency, which coupled with my grammar instruction at school, allowed
me to understand the language fairly well, and to read and write at a basic level. I went on to
pursue a B.A. in Spanish Language and Culture at the University of Central Florida, and
participated in two short study abroad programs, my sophomore year in Madrid, Spain, and the
following year in Buenos Aires, Argentina. My program in Spain proved to be less immersive
than my experience in Argentina due to the fact that it was taken with a larger, predominantly
English-speaking group, and did not include a home-stay dimension, which I found to greatly
assist my development of fluency during my second year of study abroad.
The overall complexity of our individual cultural identities are so connected to our
conceptualization of the role of language, particularly when looking at the development of our
own linguistic capacity on a time scale of experiences, as defining moments in our lives.
Obviously, I found that my passion for languages has consequently led to an profound interest in
the developmental and cognitive aspects of language acquisition, and I can only hope that my
fascination fuels a fulfilling career of lifelong learning.