Ramirez
Evelyn
Timothy Dalton
English

                                                                                                                             Understanding A Bilingual

Learning a new language can be difficult, especially coming from an immigrant family. Immigrant families that come from a different background that then come to the United States and are expected to know English. Once they have children, they are forced to learn english. Especially the first generation. First generation kids have to know English for their parents in order to help them. Parents most likely have a lack of knowledge of English and how to speak it. This is why they mostly depend on their daughters or sons to help them. For example, like doctor visits, visits to the school, helping with technology, and communicating in general. It is important that kids learn how to speak English and their own native language at home. Although it can be difficult, it is very important.

Being bilingual or trilingual can have some advantages. Children pick up reading skills faster than monolingual kids.They have more advantage for jobs because it tells that you have another skill than most people. You can also get a raise for speaking more than 1 language. You can have better communication skills with people around. Children knowing 2 languages at a young age can pick up on word structures and more vocabulary words. Bilingual children have a stronger mind and attention span.

    Being bilingual and trilingual can have some disadvantages as well. There aren't many pros but there are some. It can be difficult to be a master in one language. There can be some barriers to knowing a language better than the other. Similarly, you can lose your cultural identity. When you know one language better than the other then you aren't much involved in your other culture that you are also associated with. For people it can be tiring to switch languages every time. It all depends on where and who you are with to keep switching from language to language.  

     From my personal experience, this can be difficult because it's challenging switching from one language to another. Going from school I only had to speak english and when I go back home I would have to switch and speak spanish. This became hard overtime because as I was learning English I lost my Spanish. I used to speak Spanglish, which means it's a way of speaking mixes of spanish and english and alternating words because I wouldn't know a word in spanish so I say them in english. This comes from the lack of knowledge and cultural background. Doing this also gave me a problem with my stuttering, it has become a problem because the switching made it hard. 

    While on the topic about language barrier the text Mothers Tongue by Amy Tan had some similar issues. Who is Amy Tan? Amy Tan born on February 19, 1952, is an author that comes from a Chinese background. She writes books, children's books and novels. In some of her novels she talks about her family and where she comes from. She used to love reading novels that were written by women and got encouragement from an author to start writing about her own stories. Later on when she wrote The Joy Luck Club is when she started getting recognition. She would always write about relationships with mothers and daughters. 

         Like in Mothers Tongue she would share her experiences about living with a family that didn't know english. Since know one knew English she would have to speak in her language which was chinese in order to communicate with her family. When she would go to school she would have to switch. She says that this affected her in her life and education. She had mentioned that when she would speak to her mom she would be stuck on the words because she did not know how to say them in her own language. It affected her life in a way where she did not like how her mother did not know any english. People would take advantage of that when people do not speak in the language because they can take advantage of you. Which is why she would always have to help with doctors. She would lie about being her mother on the phone just so people would take them seriously. People often do this too. They would say that their voice doesn't matter or it isn't as important because they do not know anyways. 

       In Mothers Tongue it does show the relationship between a mother and a daughter that struggle to communicate. Her mother does not know any English while her daughter does not know as much of chinese. She would notice that she would talk in both languages by accident and that it has turned into a habit. She noticed from also talking to her family members in that way. This goes to show that a lot of people may struggle with this kind of problem. Not only are we, the people who learned English as our second language, struggling, it is also our parents that are going through the same thing. Parents would be confused with speaking and we can also be confused in communicating with them. Children would get embarrassed if their parents do not know how to communicate very well and can even get annoyed. 

      It is also very important to teach our parents how to learn English to live better. Especially living in the United States. Now we still have to communicate in English and it may get a lot harder. It is always important to learn sooner than later. Vise versa, us people that came from immigrant parents should learn our own native language that we came from. These are important people we learn to be bilingual and we can easily communicate with the people living in our household. We won't lose our cultural identity and learn a lot more. The more languages you speak the better opportunities you will be able to get at this time. 

Amy Tan has written her novels to influence people to embrace themselves. She writes about her mother and how rough it was growing up and how her childhood was like, living with a mother that only knows how to speak chinese. A lot of people stereotyping them made her upset that others were treating her mom in this type of way. Showing others that this is normal to feel that way. Feeling discouraged especially coming from an immigrant parent and us being kids living in the United States is like.

Targeted audience; Kids in the US that come from immigrant parents who are bilingual
Purpose: Showing how it is difficult living and teaching our parents English and us learning both.

SOURCES
​https://thenavigatio.com/cons-of-being-bilingual/

https://cuny-cc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_CC/o05rus/alma9994297621606138