Major Learning Outcome 2: Linguistics
One of the most challenging topics I found being a part of the Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures major here at CSUMB was linguistics. After going through several courses dealing with linguistics I can still safely say that it is quite a challenge for me, but nevertheless most of the nerves I felt coming into the courses was due to inexperience. Being that I grew up speaking Spanish at home and with friends and also that I had previously had classes in Spanish through high school and community college, I believed I had a considerable repertoire of knowledge on the subject. But including linguistics in the mix meant that it was a topic I had never really considered, to the point that I feared the mention. Going through the three courses of Linguistics I reached the conclusion that linguistics can be a very trying subject but with effort it is definitely possible to reach a deeper understanding to what lies behind the difficult terminology.
The first linguistics course I decided to take on was SPAN315: Intro to Translation. This course attracted me because it was a subject I felt I had some base knowledge of the topic, because I use the two languages (English and Spanish) frequently and was often an interpreter in day to day tasks for my family who only speaks Spanish. While completing the course, I was able to discover that there were a number of techniques that were used to translate materials and a large number of ways words could be translated into Spanish. It was often a challenging course, since there were a variety of ways that phrases could be translated while maintaining the same meaning. Another aspect I had not previously considered was the variety of Spanish that is used around the world. In my life I was surrounded by the style of Spanish spoken by Mexicans and bilinguals, but through this class I was able to gain more a wider vocabulary of terms that were synonyms to words I already used, but that are used in different regions. Along with the vast knowledge I gained in this course was a wonderful resource that I have used for months, and that I can easily see myself using in the future, a site called WordReference, that serves as a translator for words. This is extremely helpful because as a bilingual, there are times when I can only think of a word I need in one language and not necessarily in the one I need it at the time.
The other two courses proved to be even more challenging, since they dealt with topics I had never considered: SPAN395: Spanish Applied Linguistics and SPAN345: Bilingualism in the Spanish World. These courses dealt with the terminology and research behind the application of Spanish acquisition and the aspects that influence and build up a bilingual, respectively. These courses were heavily supplemented by terminology based texts.
One of the best resources for these courses was discussions, led by our professors, and required us to really implement the readings into terms we could understand. It is thanks to these efforts that I was able to go through these courses, being able to now openly discuss linguistics, both in application and acquisition of language, understanding the subject with greater ease than I ever expected to accomplish.
One of the most challenging topics I found being a part of the Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures major here at CSUMB was linguistics. After going through several courses dealing with linguistics I can still safely say that it is quite a challenge for me, but nevertheless most of the nerves I felt coming into the courses was due to inexperience. Being that I grew up speaking Spanish at home and with friends and also that I had previously had classes in Spanish through high school and community college, I believed I had a considerable repertoire of knowledge on the subject. But including linguistics in the mix meant that it was a topic I had never really considered, to the point that I feared the mention. Going through the three courses of Linguistics I reached the conclusion that linguistics can be a very trying subject but with effort it is definitely possible to reach a deeper understanding to what lies behind the difficult terminology.
The first linguistics course I decided to take on was SPAN315: Intro to Translation. This course attracted me because it was a subject I felt I had some base knowledge of the topic, because I use the two languages (English and Spanish) frequently and was often an interpreter in day to day tasks for my family who only speaks Spanish. While completing the course, I was able to discover that there were a number of techniques that were used to translate materials and a large number of ways words could be translated into Spanish. It was often a challenging course, since there were a variety of ways that phrases could be translated while maintaining the same meaning. Another aspect I had not previously considered was the variety of Spanish that is used around the world. In my life I was surrounded by the style of Spanish spoken by Mexicans and bilinguals, but through this class I was able to gain more a wider vocabulary of terms that were synonyms to words I already used, but that are used in different regions. Along with the vast knowledge I gained in this course was a wonderful resource that I have used for months, and that I can easily see myself using in the future, a site called WordReference, that serves as a translator for words. This is extremely helpful because as a bilingual, there are times when I can only think of a word I need in one language and not necessarily in the one I need it at the time.
The other two courses proved to be even more challenging, since they dealt with topics I had never considered: SPAN395: Spanish Applied Linguistics and SPAN345: Bilingualism in the Spanish World. These courses dealt with the terminology and research behind the application of Spanish acquisition and the aspects that influence and build up a bilingual, respectively. These courses were heavily supplemented by terminology based texts.
One of the best resources for these courses was discussions, led by our professors, and required us to really implement the readings into terms we could understand. It is thanks to these efforts that I was able to go through these courses, being able to now openly discuss linguistics, both in application and acquisition of language, understanding the subject with greater ease than I ever expected to accomplish.