WLC Integrative Narrative
Ever since the first month of freshman year of high school, I have loved learning different languages. Sra. Lopez made learning Spanish into a game of sorts, teaching our class the verb tenses, irregular verbs, colors, and of course, watching animated movies in Spanish. Thanks to both her and my later Spanish teacher, Sra. Phillips, I continued the class through my senior year, earning the California State Seal of Biliteracy, one of only five graduates to earn the award. From there, I took an intermediate Spanish course at Sierra College, and decided it was the path I desired to follow as a career. All through school, I worked to keep good grades to get into a university where I could study what I wished, and ended up at my dream school: CSU Monterey Bay, where I had heard professors from the Dual Language Academy and Middlebury Institute often teach courses, and I knew it was where I wanted to be.
However, I faced a problem: what did I want to do with my degree? I had always assumed the most likely outcome was teaching, just as my mother does. Though I learned in classes like our WLC 300 course that there is an extensive need for translators and interpreters, I found myself still leaning toward pedagogy. Ultimately, through advice from family, friends, and classmates, I decided that teaching high school students a foreign language was right for me. (Thanks, y’all.) For weeks, I studied for my CSET Exams and eventually received confirmation of my admission into CSUMB’s Credential Program for Summer 2020 to Spring 2021, and I cannot wait to get started!
I have gone through proud moments of success and I have experienced low moments of failure – it was a tough 5 semesters for sure. Some classes were easy A’s, like JAPN 307 or SPAN 303, which felt like a review of everything else I had been learning since 2011. Other classes were significantly harder: I had to work and study harder for these classes than anything else. Classes that fit this category includes MLO 3 classes like SPAN 322 and 330, two literature courses I took at the same time and therefore was assigned ~100 pages of reading and analysis on a weekly basis, on top of two further courses. Another difficult course was SPAN 395, which, while one of the most useful, career-oriented classes I have ever taken, was filled with topics I was learning for the first time, and could not relate to any previous knowledge I held about the Spanish language. These courses made me earn my A’s and B’s that I received, and they were incredibly tough for me. Luckily, this knowledge has been incredibly useful, especially with regard to the CSET Exams, and hopefully I will be able to use the information I learned in these classes later in my career.
Thanks to so many amazing courses in the past five semesters, I have been able to vastly expand my knowledge of Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures. Classes part of MLO 1 and MLO 2 helped strengthen my language skills, which I was able to apply in all other courses conducted in Spanish. MLO 3, as mentioned above, were often more challenging and tested my ability to properly analyze texts, which has greatly helped me in my capstone project, where I researched the original texts of several sources we had read in SPAN 322, including Historia de las Indias by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. Though MLO 4 only had one class, I appreciated the work that Professor Pham put into teaching my a secondary culture, which I still reference and use today, two years later. MLO 5 and 6 helped me with my research abilities, learning how to properly use APA formatting and how to safely and legally conduct extensive research.
Despite all I have achieved – graduating Magna Cum Laude with a Spanish major and an Anthropology minor – there is a lot of room for improvement and expansion. While my family considers me to be “fluent” in the language, I know that there is a lot of knowledge I still lack. Yes, I understand most grammatical and syntactical rules of the language, I find myself missing quite a bit of vocabulary: sure, I know enough to get by and to hold a descent conversation in a wide variety of topics, but I will often find myself circumlocuting to describe the word I want to use. The other part of my abilities that I criticize myself for is my lack of confidence. Even when my classmates assure me that I speak Spanish well, I find every flaw and every small mistake. As I grow more confident, I hope that my fluency will increase as well.
At the end of my senior year here on campus, and as I sit in my room after the digitalization of all courses this semester, I am given the time to reflect on the two-and-a-half years I spent here as an undergraduate student. I think about the support system I found through my capstone classmates, my professors and advisors, my coworkers, and other friends. All these people pushed me beyond my previous goals and made me strive to work harder than I had before. It was thanks to these classes through all 6 MLOs that I began to truly feel this was the right path for me to take, and it will be interesting to see how these choices influence the rest of my life.
However, I faced a problem: what did I want to do with my degree? I had always assumed the most likely outcome was teaching, just as my mother does. Though I learned in classes like our WLC 300 course that there is an extensive need for translators and interpreters, I found myself still leaning toward pedagogy. Ultimately, through advice from family, friends, and classmates, I decided that teaching high school students a foreign language was right for me. (Thanks, y’all.) For weeks, I studied for my CSET Exams and eventually received confirmation of my admission into CSUMB’s Credential Program for Summer 2020 to Spring 2021, and I cannot wait to get started!
I have gone through proud moments of success and I have experienced low moments of failure – it was a tough 5 semesters for sure. Some classes were easy A’s, like JAPN 307 or SPAN 303, which felt like a review of everything else I had been learning since 2011. Other classes were significantly harder: I had to work and study harder for these classes than anything else. Classes that fit this category includes MLO 3 classes like SPAN 322 and 330, two literature courses I took at the same time and therefore was assigned ~100 pages of reading and analysis on a weekly basis, on top of two further courses. Another difficult course was SPAN 395, which, while one of the most useful, career-oriented classes I have ever taken, was filled with topics I was learning for the first time, and could not relate to any previous knowledge I held about the Spanish language. These courses made me earn my A’s and B’s that I received, and they were incredibly tough for me. Luckily, this knowledge has been incredibly useful, especially with regard to the CSET Exams, and hopefully I will be able to use the information I learned in these classes later in my career.
Thanks to so many amazing courses in the past five semesters, I have been able to vastly expand my knowledge of Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures. Classes part of MLO 1 and MLO 2 helped strengthen my language skills, which I was able to apply in all other courses conducted in Spanish. MLO 3, as mentioned above, were often more challenging and tested my ability to properly analyze texts, which has greatly helped me in my capstone project, where I researched the original texts of several sources we had read in SPAN 322, including Historia de las Indias by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. Though MLO 4 only had one class, I appreciated the work that Professor Pham put into teaching my a secondary culture, which I still reference and use today, two years later. MLO 5 and 6 helped me with my research abilities, learning how to properly use APA formatting and how to safely and legally conduct extensive research.
Despite all I have achieved – graduating Magna Cum Laude with a Spanish major and an Anthropology minor – there is a lot of room for improvement and expansion. While my family considers me to be “fluent” in the language, I know that there is a lot of knowledge I still lack. Yes, I understand most grammatical and syntactical rules of the language, I find myself missing quite a bit of vocabulary: sure, I know enough to get by and to hold a descent conversation in a wide variety of topics, but I will often find myself circumlocuting to describe the word I want to use. The other part of my abilities that I criticize myself for is my lack of confidence. Even when my classmates assure me that I speak Spanish well, I find every flaw and every small mistake. As I grow more confident, I hope that my fluency will increase as well.
At the end of my senior year here on campus, and as I sit in my room after the digitalization of all courses this semester, I am given the time to reflect on the two-and-a-half years I spent here as an undergraduate student. I think about the support system I found through my capstone classmates, my professors and advisors, my coworkers, and other friends. All these people pushed me beyond my previous goals and made me strive to work harder than I had before. It was thanks to these classes through all 6 MLOs that I began to truly feel this was the right path for me to take, and it will be interesting to see how these choices influence the rest of my life.