Marison's Story (La Historia de Marison)

Marison in Nicaragua, 2017.

In this post, I outline my language learning experiences, mostly with Spanish and a little with French. I share some significant times in my life that have inspired me to learn and keep learning!

Early Years

When I was younger, around five or six, my mom would take my sister and me to the library at least once a week during the summers. It was walking distance from our house and was one of our favorite places. During one of our visits, I found myself looking through audiobooks on CD (I had just received my own portable CD player with headphones from my dad). My eye caught a purple and white CD case that said “Learn French—beginner”. One of my favorite stories as a child was Madeleine, so naturally I was intrigued and convinced that I could be just like her and speak French. So for that summer, I constantly had my headphones on, listening to that beginner French CD.

I grew up in a typical American household—monolingual, English-speaking. No one in my family, save my uncle, spoke another language. He studied Spanish and now regularly uses it as a pilot. Beyond that, learning more than one language was impressive, but unnecessary in the eyes of my family. My mom was fascinated by my autonomy and desire to listen to French but thought it no more than an amusing and temporary interest. 

Learning Language in Public School

At that point, since I did not have foreign language classes in school until eighth grade, my learning ceased. All I retained of the French language were the numbers to ten. In eighth grade, I finally got to sign up for a course in Spanish, the only language offered in middle school. 

I fell in love. I had an incredible teacher, with whom I am still friends with today, which certainly influenced my desire to learn. All of my friends truly believed I would pursue Spanish and possibly teach it one day. The next few years, however, I let a teenage attitude get in the way of learning and gave up on Spanish. I still did well in my classes, but had no motivation beyond simply finishing the language credits needed for high school.

Spanish in University

A few years later I began studying Speech Language Pathology, a field very closely related to Linguistics, but with a clinical approach. I had another four semesters of foreign language as required for my degree, and somehow at nineteen years old, sitting in an advising session, I suddenly felt that same strong desire to actually learn and internalize the Spanish language. I was almost cursing myself for forgetting that I did in fact at one point have a desire to speak con fluidez! Soon enough, I was flying through Spanish courses and studying outside of the classroom setting. My sister, who had been learning Spanish for a few years at that point, would call me, and our conversation always began with an extensive Spanish exchange. After my second year of college and multiple foundational courses, I signed up for a summer study-abroad program in Costa Rica with two professors from my university.

The trip to San José was my first time flying alone (I arrived a day before any of my professors and peers) and I can’t say I was free from my nerves and fear. Not fear for my actual safety or anything, but for fear that I had chosen a late-night flight to a foreign country where English is not the dominant language as my first time navigating airports on my own. On the plane, I sat next to a lovely elderly Costa Rican woman on her way home. She could sense my apprehension and engaged me in conversation—my first memorable Spanish conversation with a native speaker in the ‘real world.’ I was so comforted and felt empowered and autonomous, knowing that I could navigate my way through this foreign language that was slowly feeling more comfortable to me. I made it through the airport, found my ride, and met my host mother at the university around 11 p.m. I was  thrilled but exhausted,  to functionally use this language that I had always used in theory.

My time in Costa Rica brought more depth to my knowledge of the Spanish language via functional everyday use and input. I loved speaking with Uber drivers, my professors, locals in the city center and in coffee shops, the two sisters who owned the smoothie shop right in front of my host home, and of course, my host family. The fondness I grew to have for the language and culture of Costa Rica led me to the decision to add Spanish as a second degree to my undergraduate studies. It also has inspired more trips to South America! I have visited and volunteered with an Ecuadorian couple each summer since that first experience studying abroad. Kati and Alejandro run a church/foundation in Quito that serves as a place where people gather for worship, food, or sometimes, just to play soccer. They are always working on different community projects around Quito and in the more rural areas of Ecuador. Whenever I go, I mostly help facilitate whatever project is already being done by people that work with them. I’ve made many friends that live in Ecuador and keep up with them via Instagram and WhatsApp.

Micah (sister) and Marison in Ecuador 2019.

Other Experiences

The following year, my family decided to host two foreign exchange students: Luca from Germany and Pepe from Spain. With Pepe, I expected to communicate easily in Spanish, but soon realized how truly different his European Spanish dialect is from the dialects of Central and South America I was used to—we experienced the flexibility and dynamic nature of language first hand by observing these differences and then finding a way to communicate through them. I was amazed that the language we were both speaking was considered the same one and after about three months, we calibrated our Spanish. German is still so foreign to me, but I did acquire a fondness for hearing Luca speak with his family—it is a more beautiful language than the perception I always had.  And, being a teenage boy, he made sure we all knew every curse-word in German! Luca and Pepe are both considered our brothers and a permanent part of our family and my sisters and I always include them in our “sibling count”. They have given me another personal reason for why I want to learn more languages and cultures. Maybe I will even have a go at learning German one day.

Around graduation, I began seeking out tutoring and teaching opportunities. Most were with friends or family. A coworker told me about LanGo Institute while I was still living in Denton. I reached out and started as an intern, mostly helping in the Spanish classes. I was then given my opportunity to teach students in a formal setting and have really felt growth and more directional purpose in language teaching. I also currently work as an elementary school bilingual (English & Spanish) special education aide. My main job is to help students in the classroom with schoolwork they may not understand. Through this, I have learned a lot of new, topic-specific Spanish vocabulary because unlike many of my students, I was taught early school subjects in English and never learned Spanish vocabulary specific to mathematical concepts like addition and subtraction, for example. The ability to speak both English and Spanish landed me this job and has allowed me to work with students of both languages. It is so rewarding to be able to functionally use it in a work setting.

With my newfound free time in quarantine, I have given a generous nod to my past self by picking up some new French resources. This is the language that essentially started all of this fortunate love for language learning that I have deep within me! There are many times in my life where I tried to ignore those little voices, but today I realize those are exactly the voices we should be listening to.

Luca, Micah, Marison, and Pepe in the Wichita Mountains, Oklahoma in 2018.

Future Plans and Dreams

I have no exact plans for how all of this will exactly fit into a larger picture or career for me, but I know that I love teaching and helping students connect the dots of language. I love learning more about aspects of linguistics, the etymology of words, and relationships between languages.  I plan to attend graduate school in the future, possibly to specialize in Speech Language Pathology, Linguistics, or a specific language. I’m not sure yet, but I keep telling myself that I am only twenty-three and am allowed to still be figuring out where my interests are. Before more school, I hope to move abroad again, for a longer period, to experience more language and cultural immersion, ideally, splitting some time between Spain and France. Fingers crossed that the world will be able to open up again soon so I can begin making plans! Until then, I will keep studying and practicing and teaching. 

Thank you for reading this, and I hope it may, in some small measure, inspire you to start learning a language too. Gracias por leer. Merci d’avoir lu.