Since school is part of our every day routine, it's easy to take Brooklyn's dual immersion language program for granted. Yet as she becomes more fluent, we are enjoying more opportunities to meaningfully converse in both Spanish and English. Learning a language is so marvelously rich! As Brooklyn and I were hiking in Snow Canyon State Park today, we started to talk a bit about all the flora and fauna. For some reason the word "grass" eluded us. I came up with "cesped" but I think that "hierba" was what she had in mind.
As Brooklyn searched for the right word, she switched to English and said:
"Just give me a minute. I have to turn my brain upside down and put the back all the way in the front."
I just love how she nailed the mental acrobatics of language learning. We're not just leisurely stretching our minds with a bit of español; we are reshaping the way we think.
4 comments:
Wow! That is so incredibly perfect... Leave it to Brooklyn to codify what all the rest of us are feeling.
Biblical Hebrew is like flipping your brain inside out, and on an angle...
Love that example. I am loving the dual immersion program. I cannot believe what growth I have seen in my students. I taught them last year in Kinder and this year with the English side of the Dual. What a gift and blessing! Definitely a fan!.
Wow! Yes, that's it, exactly. What a gift you're giving your children by helping them increase their fluency in another language.
I admire that both of you speak Spanish with the kids. When my son starts at our dual language immersion school (in Colorado), I won't be able to do a whole lot with him, and my "hopelessly monolingual" (his words) husband, not at all.
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