Rodriguez and Garcia- quotes- Blog 3

In the following blog post, I will discuss the articles “Theorizing Translanguaging for Educators” by Ofelia Garcia and “Aria” written by Richard Rodriguez.
“Translanguaging refers to the language practices of bilingual people” (Garcia). For Richard Rodriguez, he spoke Spanish at home for most of his childhood but spoke English at school. These were Rodriguez’s language practices as a bilingual person. Translanguaging is important to these articles because if we do not understand the definition of translanguaging, we will not understand why Rodriguez did what he did growing up and we would not understand the rest of Garcia’s article.
This is an example of how someone who is bilingual may feel when speaking.


“Without question, it would have pleased me to hear my teachers address me in Spanish when I entered the classroom. I would have felt much less afraid. I would have trusted them and responded with ease. But I would have delayed-for how long postponed?-having to learn the language of public society” (Rodriguez 34). Rodriguez did not feel comfortable speaking English and he much would have rather gone to a school where everyone spoke Spanish but as an adult he realized going to the school he went to was helpful because it forced him to learn English. This is important for the reader to hear so they can understand how hard it was for Rodriguez to constantly switch languages.
“Today I hear bilingual educators say that children lose a degree of individuality' by becoming assimilated into public society” (Rodriguez 38). This quote made me think about how bilingual children can be judged if they only know one language and that is not fair. I think that learning a second language is definitely important but if someone does not know a language of one of their parents, they should not be judged.
In class I would like to discuss how Rodriguez had a tough time growing up because he was constantly having to switch back and forth between English and Spanish and this affected his home life, his school life, and his social life. I think this would be interesting to talk about in class because there are definitely bilingual people in our class and it would be interesting to hear about how they switched back and forth between different languages.

Comments

  1. SupriyaFNEDFebruary 24, 2019 at 9:32 PM

    I LOVED YOUR IMAGE, as a bilingual student, I FEEL IT. I know so many words in Hindi and Punjabi that I may not know in English. I keep having to think in hindi and speak in english!

    ReplyDelete
  2. julzespoFebruary 25, 2019 at 6:56 AM

    The image that you used really works so well for this piece. It really says a thousand words. I also liked your input on the topic.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Akkaoui_BlogLogFebruary 25, 2019 at 3:21 PM

    I can relate to your text going to the side like it is now. My computer was doing that too. But looking at the content of your post individuality is something that I found interesting in Rodriguez's article because culture is a part of someone. You can not replace that with something else and expect someone to feel whole. That is why everyone does Ancestry.com because it gives people their own set of history and a place to belong.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alison KleinebreilFebruary 26, 2019 at 6:16 PM

    I really liked your analysis and I loved how you acknowledged what you want to discuss further in class. I too would like to talk more about Richard’s childhood and the struggles he had to endure due to being bilingual. I also absolutely loved your picture and thought that it was super powerful!

    ReplyDelete

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