Sophia Quattrocchi

Dr. Cho

C&T 598

29 May 2019

Language/Literacy Autobiography

Following my adoption at six months old, I grew up in an English speaking household.

English is my first language, and I acquired through exposure at home with family and school.

All communication between my family and friends, as well as television and school were all

conducted in English, and there was little exposure to any other languages. Around two or three

years old my parents began reading me stories. I quickly acquired listening and speaking skills

with continuous exposure at home. I learned the alphabet at age three or four, and shortly after I

learned how to write my name. I slowly learned how to read and write starting in Kindergarten

and quickly gained proficiency in reading and writing throughout elementary school. Since I

grew up in an English speaking environment, I would consider myself fluent in English, as I’m

able to easily understand and communicate both verbally and in written language.

In my school district in Lincoln, Nebraska there were no foreign languages classes taught

in elementary school. The little exposure I had to any other language other than English was

through children’s television shows, such as Dora the Explorer. While there was little foreign

language exposure during elementary school, formal language learning began in sixth grade. In

sixth grade, students were required to take Spanish class for one semester and in seventh grade

students were required to take French for one semester. I don’t really remember any French from

my seventh grade class because I did not continue learning French after this class. I do vaguely

remember my sixth grade Spanish class. We learned the Spanish alphabet, basic phrases,
vocabulary, and basic grammar conjugations. Since the Spanish alphabet is so similar to English

alphabet, we quickly learned the letter pronunciations. And since the grammar structure is very

similar to English grammar we focused less on grammar structure and more on verb conjugations

and vocabulary. I continued my Spanish education in eighth grade and throughout high school.

In eighth grade, students can get ahead in their high school language requirements and

take Spanish 1 or French 1. Otherwise students can wait to start language in high school where

there are more language options such as Japanese and German, in addition to Spanish and

French. In order to graduate high school, students needed to complete two years of a foreign

language, however, many colleges require four years of a foreign language. I began Spanish 1 in

eighth grade and continued until junior year of high school. Even though I took four years of

Spanish classes, I haven’t retained much of the language. During Spanish class we worked a lot

grammar conjugations and vocabulary. My high school was on a block schedule, so we only had

four classes that were each ninety minutes and then enrolled in new classes at the semester. In

my opinion, the block schedule was not ideal for language learning because we only had

exposure to Spanish for half of the school year. As I didn’t have Spanish class for half the year,

each year I forgot a lot of the vocabulary and communication skills that I had learned the

previous year. Also, when I did have my Spanish class, the class was ninety minutes long, which

made it difficult for students to remain focused.

During high school I had one very good Spanish teacher and two bad Spanish teachers.

With these two teachers, I learned very little because there was little structure to the classroom.

The teacher would speak in English a majority of the time, giving us little exposure to Spanish.

Also the teacher would make us to several small art activities such as drawing, crafts, and books

which took up a lot of time and involved little language content. The activities we did had no
clear language objective and had little structure which was frustrating. Since I wasn’t passionate

about learning Spanish, I did little outside the classroom to compensate for the poor classroom

environment. However, I learned much more from my other Spanish teacher, Señor Hill. Señor

Hill had much more classroom structure while also still engaging the students. He would speak

Spanish almost the whole time, and focused much more on speaking activities. I remember doing

vocabulary flashcards and practice skits in his class which were both helpful to improving my

Spanish ability. However, I had little classroom time, had periods of time in between learning

Spanish, and was not very passionate about learning the language. Due to these reasons I did not

become very proficient in Spanish, and quickly lost my language skills following high school. It

was not until I started working in a Mexican restaurant with several Spanish speakers that I

started to pick up a bit of the language again. However, today I only know basic phrases, some

basic vocabulary, and present tense verb conjugations.

Following high school, I wanted to learn Korean in college, a language I was much more

passionate about. My experience in my Korean language classroom has been a much better

environment for language learning. My Korean class is everyday for approximately an hour

during the whole academic year. The class is divided into lecture (twice a week) and

conversational drill (three times a week). Grammar points are taught during lecture and during

drill, there is speaking practice using the grammar points learned previously. Korean class has

been much different from Spanish class mainly because of much more classroom time in

Korean. This allows for much more opportunity in listening to Korean and more speaking

practice. I have also learned much more in Korean because I am passionate about learning the

language, rather than being required to learn. Compared to Spanish, learning Korean started off

very slow. Due to such large differences between Korean and English, first semester was very
slow moving and focused on building a solid foundation. In class, we spent a long time

mastering the korean alphabet, hangul. I’m glad we spent a long time learning hangul, because

mastering hangul allows for proficiency in reading and writing and makes pronunciation much

easier to understand.

After creating a foundation in hangul we began learning basic phrases and grammatical

structure. Since reading and writing was easy after mastering hangul, we focus mainly on

grammar points, speaking, and listening. We have vocabulary quizzes three times a week which

is nice because it forces us to learn vocab, and then we master the vocabulary by incorporating it

in our lessons. We do a lot of dialogue practice. The activity I find most useful is when we read

an example dialogue, and then we fill it in with our own responses using the grammar point we

are learning. I wish we did more task-based learning, such as checking out at store. More

realistic role-playing activities would be useful when visiting Korea.

Korean has been much more difficult to learn due to its very different grammar structure,

alphabet, and honorifics. Despite higher difficulty compared to Spanish, I have learned and

retained much more Korean. I use Korean much more outside the classroom when studying in

Seoul, watching Korean television, and listening to Korean music. However, I wish devoted

more time to my Korean assignments, however, it is hard with a busy schedule during the

semester. Despite three years of Korean, I would still consider myself monolingual. Although I

can communicate conversationally in Korean, I still have trouble communicating with native

speakers. Hopefully with more exposure and speaking practice I will be able to consider myself

bilingual in English and Korean.