Rodriguez- Aria (Extented Comment)

Richard Rodrigues

Aria

               When I was reading this article this week I was really hoping to see what some people wrote about it. I decided I would do an extended comment on it and really analyze and see it from another person’s point of view. I decided to do it on Raquel’s blog. Her blog really spoke to me and I knew I could kind of expand on what she had written. I like how she connected it to herself and her speaking Portuguese growing up. It seemed as though her and Rodrigues went through the same thing. She goes on to explain how she did. I really like the how she said it was hard to learn a language that you haven’t been speaking your whole life. This can be connected to kids having to learn a foreign language in high school. I know it was so difficult for me to learn Spanish in high school. It was a hard thing to grasp a whole different kind of culture, so I can only imagine the struggle adults must go though from other countries, when English is everywhere in America. Luckily I only had to speak Spanish in class these people have to deal with English everyday and not really understanding it. It is like Raquel’s mother. At 16 it is very hard to pick up a new language. So for the parents in “Aria” you can see why the dad just kind of stopped talking in public or around his English fluent children.

                I am not sure I am so cool on children having English be a child’s first language. It is easier for a child to pick up a “public language,” as Rodrigues calls it than that of the home language. They need that connection with their parents as a small child and if they are speaking English then that communication is taken away. Children need that tie to their family roots. It is also said that children who are bilingual that helps boost brain power. This shows that children who learn English and their native language are more likely to succeed.

                I like what this article discusses. I also like the connection Raquel made to it in her own life. My friend speaks Russian and she told me that when she came over here from America she did not talk in school for almost two months. How was she supposed to learn English though if her parents had no idea how to speak it? She could not lose that tie with her family and just start learning English right off the bat. 

My question for class is should parents then learn a language before moving to a country to better educate their child?