My language learning experience (reposted under new account!) :)

My language learning experience has been affected by a multitude of events and circumstances that have motivated and encouraged me to appreciate and love learning foreign languages. As the daughter of Uruguayan parents, I was raised in both the English and Spanish language. My parents insisted that my sisters and I speak Spanish at home, particularly the dinner table, while English was spoken outside of the home and while doing school work. Fortunately, the combination worked wonders. I grew up speaking both languages fluently, without an accent in either language (or so I’m told). In pursuit of becoming trilingual, I look German in high school and found it rather easy to learn a new language. Perhaps it was my knowledge of grammatical patterns or my comfort with practicing pronunciation without the fear of making mistakes that made language learning fun. It was in my German class that I realized that I learn languages best through emulating others. My German teacher was the only native speaker I knew of, therefore, I would make a conscious effort to study her accent, pitch, etc. and copy what I heard. While I was in college, I spent a year abroad in Spain. Though I am a native Spanish speaker, it was amazing to be surrounding by the distinct Spanish of the Spaniards (known as Castilian, although many in the southern portion of South America claim to speak Castilian as well). Being immersed in a form of Spanish that was unnatural to me was very tricky! While basic communication was relatively simple, certain words and phrases had different meanings- and many times, I learned that the hard way. While studying Moroccan Arabic in Morocco, I was fully immersed in a language and culture that I was not very familiar with. Linguistically, Spanish and Arabic have several similarities, however, I spent several hours a day listening to Moroccan people speak. I would not speak English and forced myself to use the little vocabulary I did learn on a day to day basis. A few of my classmates and I would dialog as much as possible in Arabic. We would also practice our oral and writing skills with Moroccans who were attempting to do the same in learning English. Once I came back, I attempted to continue my study of the language through the Rosetta Stone program. While I was impressed with the learning strategies used, I found that I gained more through personal interaction and feedback rather than following a computer program with a variety of limitations. While there are amazing teachers who are non-native fluent in any given language, I believe that having native language-speaking teachers, or more importantly, immersing myself into a specific language and culture is the way in which I have succeeded most in my language learning experiences. I have yet to master any language as well as English and Spanish but I have not given up just yet!