Reviewing A YouTube Video Entitled "Growing Up Bilingual in the USA. The Benefits of Bilingualism" by Ecolinguist

Hi Lovely People! 

Welcome back to 21^st Centurian blog! It’s been so long not to post any contents. Well, surely because the post will be appeared only when the writer has a task. (😃). However, the writer is still rooting to look for an endless time to try producing any contents that out of the task project.

In today’s post, I’m aiming to review a video from YouTube, as one of the requirements for accomplishing the final project of Sociolinguistics class which carried out by Mrs. Yuna Tresna Wahyuna, S.S., M.Pd.

The video that I’m going to review is related to one of Sociolingustic materials that we have discussed, so it’s basically about bilingual, it’s one of the central discussion about Multilingual Speech Communities in 'section one' of An Introduction of Sociolinguistics book. So in this time, I’d like to give an authentic example by reviewing a video about the real story of a woman who is growing up bilingual in a big country, which is the USA. The title of the video is “Growing Up Bilingual in the USA. The Benefits of Bilingualism.” 

Before I explain the whole story of the video, I would like to mention the detail information of the video as well as the channel of the video.

• Title of the Video: Growing Up Bilingual in the USA. The Benefits of Bilingulism.
• Date Published: Friday, March 29^th 2019
• YouTube Channel : Ecolinguist
• Brief Description of the Channel : The Ecolingust is a kind of language learning channel by Norbert Wierzbicki which mainly focuses on Polish and other Slavic language. Norbert Wierzbicki is a Polish teacher and language content creator. He is also an advocate for a Multilingual World. In this channel, he wants it to be a place where people of the World can meet, discuss language and make friends. 
•   Link of the Video : https://youtu.be/agYzatdHfv4

So without any further, let’s get into the review:

In this video, Norbert Wierzbicki interview and talk to his Mexican American friend, her name is  Evelyn from Los Angeles. She’s a bilingual by speaking English and Spanish. In this video, Evelyn shares her experience of growing up bilingual in Los Angeles, California. During the talk, they learn how she's grown from being embarrassed about her Spanish to fully embracing it and using to her benefit. Moreover, in the video they discuss what to do if we’re a heritage language speaker and who want to develop our language skills.

Table contents of the video:

0:10 - Introduction and Evelyn’s background, learning Spanish at home.

2:18 - Learning English as a child - overhearing English from siblings; using it at school.

6:48 - English takes over Spanish.

8:25 - Spanish literature classes as a way of improving Spanish language skills.

10:26 - Taking basic Spanish classes at school - Hola! ¿Cómo estás? - too easy for native speakers.

11:13 - Spanish Classes in College. Being away from Spanish speaking community. Missing mum. Spanish literature as a cure for homesickness.

13:25 - Speaking Spanish as a part of one’s identity. Overcoming the fear of  being judged by the stereotypes assigned to Spanish speakers in the US.

15:15 - Diversity among heritage speakers of Spanish in high school. Being Latino. Language and appearance.

17:15 - Putting effort into maintaining and developing one’s heritage language. The benefits of bilingualism. External motivation to develop the heritage language. Meeting non-heritage learners of Spanish.

19:57 - Facing challenges at university.

21:18 - Traveling to Spanish speaking countries.

22:30 - Different Spanish accents. Perception of an accent. Advice to kids growing up bilingual and their parents.

25:07 - Being of service to your community.

27:00 - Spanish courses for heritage speakers.

28:11 - What can you do on your own to improve your language skills?

32:40 - Growing your vocabulary in Spanish. Getting input.

33:45 - Spanish language varieties. Handling vocabulary from different regions. Different ways of saying ‘grass’.

37:27 -  Summary and final words. Is it worth to put effort into developing your heritage language?

Here are the stories of Evelyn growing up bilingual in the USA:

Introduction and Evelyn’s background, learning Spanish at home.

            Evelyn is Norbert Wierzbicki’s friend, she from Los Angeles. She is bilingual by speaking English and Spanish. In this video they talk about Evelyn’s experience of growing up bilingual. Evelyn grew up in Los Angeles California, specifically in the East side of the city where many people who reside there are coming from Mexican descent. Both of Evelyn’s parents are Mexican, they were born in Mexico and then whet to the US. At that time they didn’t have to speak English because everybody speaks Spanish in the community or every body in the area they live speaks Spanish. So when Evelyn was growing up in the USA, she was required to learn the language which is Spanish even in the USA. So at that moment, she didn’t actually start academically learning of English until she started graduate. The time was coming when she is about the age of six or seven, she started speaking the language which English. When she was a child, she didn’t use English because most of the people surrounding her spoke Spanish. Even for today she was still required to speak Spanish than English because the majority of her community doesn’t speak English, so she didn’t have to learn English at that time.

Learning English as a child - overhearing English from siblings; using it at school.

         When she was learning English at the early age, she was being scared of speaking language and she didn’t even want to speak even a bit. However, unfortunately the other young kids from her school would speak to her in Spanish since they knew that she didn’t speak English. So she had support from the kids from the community as well as her teachers. At that time her teacher were often coming from the Latino descent so they were often asked the student often bilingual as well, since there were so many students that didn’t speak English. 
        In the process of learning English, she didn’t exactly remember the process of learning it but she remembered speaking it for the very first time. However at that moment, she actually understood the language because her brothers and sisters did speak English, and they spoke it among each other, but the rest of her family always speak Spanish to her mother including her brothers and sisters. So she actually understood the language but she never spoken it, never wrote it and didn’t really interact with it. Moreover, she was remember saying words when she starting to say words in English and being really embarrassed doing it and this was happened around first grade, when she was about six or seven or when she was in the first grade in school. 
     At that time, she was just really embarrassed because she knew the language but she was just really afraid to speak it. That is very interesting that she kind of overheard English because of her siblings, so she learn to understand it but she never had the chance to use it. 
        When she actually developed her English skills at school, she always did had difficulties because in the U.S, people are learning American standardized English which requires a specific pronunciation. She also learned like grammar and syntax in a specific way based on the US standards. At the process of learning English, she sometimes was told to stay after school since she had problems with the language especially in writing skill. However, it wasn’t a shape punishment but it was just catching up. So at that time she was focused learning to read and writing, because she often misspelled words in English. That's all because spelling in English and Spanish are totally different. So in Spanish most words are spelled the way the sound but in English is not like that. So there is a lot of time when she had a lot of misspellings. It's brought the fact that her reading wasn’t as quick as all the other students. Consequently, through all of grade school, she was often given additional assistance after school to better her English basically.

English takes over Spanish.

            Evelyn was realized that she knew a lot more English when she was in her second year of college. That was when she realized that she knew English, like she gained more vocabulary, better pronunciation, know more English regarding its culture and everything she knew more than she did Spanish.

Spanish literature classes as a way of improving Spanish language skills.

            She feel more comfortable saying that she can improve her both English and Spanish when she was younger. Because at that time she started taking Spanish including Spanish literature classes. She also realized how much vocabulary she’s lacking and she’s also have lack knowledge within the culture. She wasn’t really that much aware of it and she think once she became more fluent in the language and in a more academic setting. She felt like she was also strong in these two areas in the Spanish language where she can speak to the common person like her mother and then she can also speak in a professional environment and that’s why when she fell, she was bilingual. So it means at same point she actually have to work towards that, which is to develop her academic Spanish.

Taking basic Spanish classes at school

            Was the educational system helpful for her to get to that point? For Spanish she didn't improve a lot in education because such as in high school, most of the courses are offered for beginning Spanish speakers. It wasn't really helpful, because she already knew how to write, read and speak Spanish. Though she knew how to write, read and speak but she didn’t know like the very specifics of the language. Further, these classes were often very easy for her because they were teaching the very basic phrase, such as hello, hi, and how are you? At that time, she finished the whole year of the class and she was being the best students. However, that was the just only class, Spanish class that was offered are class where many of the students were not native speakers, because there’s also a large Asian coming, so a lot of them were Asians. However, there was still a lot of Latino descent who spoke the language and also found the class very easy.

Spanish Classes in College. Being away from Spanish speaking community. Missing her mother. Spanish literature as a cure for homesickness.

            When she finally went to college and she started taking the courses, there were some classes that were offered for native speakers. In the university level, there was a program for native speakers and she joined it. In that class, she was among students who also learned Spanish through their family. At that time no were too shy to speak it, they just were come naturally comfortable with the language and speak one way or another. That moment is when she really became interested in the language itself. Not only because she was being introduced to reading and writing but also because she was far away from home. She was so far away from the east side of Los Angeles and away from her mom and she was no longer speaking in the language. And there was a moment when she felt that she is kind of lonely. She felt lonely because she wasn’t speaking Spanish. She spent like three years not speaking Spanish, because she would only call her mom like at the time like once a week, once every two weeks and only about thirty minutes or so on, but her daily interaction with professors and students was in English. She missed speaking Spanish so she took more and more Spanish literature classes to kind of not feel lonely.

Speaking Spanish as a part of one’s identity. Overcoming the fear of being judged by the stereotypes assigned to Spanish speakers in the US.

            In her community, she usually felt comfortable speaking the language and the people around her also felt comfortable to speak to her. However in the outside of her community, or outside of the Spanish-speaking community, she did not feel comfortable speaking the language because she was also shy to speak it. She was often scared that people would think that she didn’t English, and they would treat her differently for not knowing English. Moreover, even though she do know English but her appearance can show her that she only speak Spanish. So if she speak Spanish she’s kind of affirming. She was embarrassed to speak it and she started embracing it a lot more.

Diversity among heritage speakers of Spanish in high school, being Latino. Language and appearance.

           In the time when she experienced herself in high school. There was often like some tension between the students who had parents that spoke English. Then they become a friends and talk one another. Moreover, they were outcast a little bit from the rest of them because they had parents who only spoke English. So that also meant that they didn’t really learned Spanish as fluent as she did because they had English in their household. So there was that part of it and the other part is there’s a lot of not just same of the language but also with the identity of being Latino. But it's like in a big diverse city, when people step out and the language is tied to kind of way people look. So anytime she was outside of her community, she was embarrassed, but not in her community because she was around her friends or people who spoke Spanish. So she was bilingual, she always had an advantage.

Putting effort into maintaining and developing one’s heritage language. The benefits of bilingualism. External motivation to develop the heritage language. Meeting non-heritage learners of Spanish.

            Kind of going forward with like in the university environment, when she was enrolled in these Spanish classes. She saw that a lot of the students who were in these classes were not coming from the heritage of the language and she just saw how fascinated they were in the culture, in the language and she thought like she never participated in any of this and all other students who may or may not have a such a close relationship to the language and yet they have this desire to learn it and it was often embarrassing to her like people from Denver and they’re completely fluent in Spanish and they know more words than she do. They write it better than her. At that time she kept thinking that was embarrassing because she couldn’t believe that all these other ethnicities were interested in the language that she grew up. However, she also grew up disliking because it brought her so much trouble when she was learning English at the same time. She often run into trouble and even more, for instance in the university level, she often had to code switch or to being using more academic terminology.

Facing challenges at university.

            There was also kind of challenge that contributed to the language after she saw how many other cultures were embracing the language. At that time, she should do the same things because it’s natural for her to say and speak in the correct verb tense. She don’t have to study that much, because she know enough about it. So she don’t have to think about it, she just do it and she thought this is an advantage that she have and she should use it. 
Thus, she guess it required her to see other cultures taking so much interest in the language that she spoke in her whole life, and she actually appreciate it even more than she did beforehand. So she just got like an outsider's perspective and then she realized what treasure she had. And it felt good because afterwards she decided to travel to Spanish-speaking countries.

Traveling to Spanish speaking countries.

She decided to travel to Spanish-speaking country. She was in cheela for six months and now in Mexico and she’s going to be there for nine months. When she was visiting the country, some people were amazed of her. They said like how is it possible that she's from the US but her Spanish was so good. Then she told them that her parents are Mexican and she grew up only learning Spanish. There's also sometimes a  little heartwarming for her because she felt that she’s part of them, even not a hundred percent, but she speak Spanish at  the same level they do. So even though they're miles apart but she’s kind of connected to like 300 million people. Lastly, some people would told her that her accent used to have like an accent on the particular area.

Different Spanish accents, perception of an accent and advice to kids growing up bilingual and their parents.

         She’s really glad that she learned to embrace the two language she speak. So she feel like she was very lucky to realize that. She also glad that she could use that potential, where there's many other kids who growing up in the United States with Spanish-speaking families that don't have a chance to embrace it. She thought that it happened since they don't even realize what they have, and they didn't know what they can do with it. As Evelyn think that they shouldn't think that what they have is something disadvantages. But they should be proud what they speak, especially Spanish. She said that the language it's in you, you have your family, all you have to do is just apply it to where they belongs. 

 Being of service to your community.

It’s very valuable that she has been able to communicate with her community so much. That's also where she saw most of her value being working in in LA in a very diverse City. She worked as an after-school coordinator and many of her students were Latino and their parents only spoke Spanish and they came to her. They were able to come to her and she was able to talk to their parents, she was also able to help the students in the same issues that she had as a child. She was able to help them, she knew what they had, she knew where and how she can help them. Because she had the same issues with the sounding of the language, the writing of the language and she knew what words that were confusing and why they were confusing them. That was such an advantage to her because there were about 60 kids and about 30 of them or a half of them were Hispanic. Then she was able to really cater them because they all had the similar language barriers that she had. She was also able to communicate with their parents, her community, help them and show them. These are the steps that she have to take so that they are not scared of speaking Spanish and that they're not scared of speaking English.

What can you do on your own to improve your language skills?

            In improving her language, she often watches a lot of films in Spanish. She also read in Spanish and she also have the opportunity to meet someone who speaks the language that she want to learn. After she found someone who have the same interest with her, she would recommend them highly to become friends with another. Moreover, in improving her language, she always listen to podcast, listening to the news in Spanish, watching general television, playing games and so on. It might be confused to know why games can improve both her Spanish and English, but it's just simple to realize that there's lot of games that are played in English can also be played in Spanish as well. Moreover, she said that the most important thing in making friends with people which intense to improve the language is in the language they speak in everyday life. By that she could learn so much vocabulary from people more she got from books and film. However, she thinks that books and films can help people with larger ideas in thinking by the language. Further, if she wants to develop her Spanish effectively, she just needs to consciously pick certain content that she consumes in Spanish like podcasts, books, even computer games. Moreover, she also surround herself with Spanish-speaking people who were not in her family, because she thought that when she speak with her, they tend to talk about the same thing, so it's not going to be helpful to enrich her vocabulary. with developing her vocabulary. 
When she was at the university level, she actually went out and looked for her community to improve her language. She look for the organizations or kind of clubs that were oriented around Latino students. At that time, she wanted to participate in the culture that she was part of Becka. That's kind of supplement that she found a community, especially in the Spanish classes because a lot of Latinos took Spanish classes and she was able to communicate with them and then her conversations were not about family anymore. By that she had to learn new vocabulary.

Growing your vocabulary in Spanish. Getting input

In enhancing her language, she said that speaking to other people not just your family it's very helpful. She said that there's a lot of  effort to learn the language and it doesn't seem to be very easy especially when she need to talk to the topic or conversation that she have never talked about in Spanish. Also, the input is very important here because that's where she get the vocabulary a lot.

Spanish language varieties. Handling vocabulary from different regions.

Because Spanish have so many variations, she consciously have to remember to use the variation of the place of where she is. Her mom is from Jalisco so there are some of the terminology that she used when she was around her mother. Thus, she sometimes got misunderstanding from people in her community. So when she say some words, they don't sometimes know what she’s saying as she’s using her own region vocabulary, so she need to consciously remember to use a vocabulary that's used in the region she’s in before speak to the others. However, when she don't know the meaning of language she speak in, she was struggling to describe what she’s trying to say.  So it's a constant learning for an language even for English learning reliability of the time when she explore a new area. It's definitely easier to remember a new vocab word from the language she already know, then she start from scratch a new language.

Summary and final words. Is it worth to put effort into developing your heritage language?
 

It's fascinating that she have been having a lot of issues at the beginning with her identity and associating or Spanish with her identity in the community. Now it's just like a tool that helps her grow and helps her explore new places and new careers. So in this case, she is such a good example that it's worth putting the time and going through that hardship and extra effort to learn the language. Specifically for people whom Spanish is not their native language or they never been exposed as kids to Spanish. They have to put a lot of effort to learn it and take advantage of it. Because the fact that she already know her heritage language to a very good level because she likes learning to love it. However, she didn't know how lucky she was until she realized that she doesn’t have to think a lot about anything. She just knows it and she was able to make it stronger and because she already have the tool, and she’s just making it a lot better.