CULTURAL EVENT

Charlie Benson Spanish 2 – T,TH 1pm – 2:15pm Cultural Event Paper April 8, 2013 “This is America and we speak English, I do not plan on leaving this country and people coming into this country should learn to speak our language and I should not have to learn theirs.” This thought is one that many people have and I will admit that I once had this very same thought. I have never been one to care for school, but my attitude has since changed.

Knowledge is very important in a person’s life, for without it you aren’t really much of anything.

In order to open my mind to new concepts, I attended the Symposium on Friday April 6, 2013 to hear Professor Carmen Rabell present about the impact that being multilingual can have on your life.

This presentation was one of the most honest and personal presentations that I have ever attended. For her to stand up in front of a classroom full of students and adults to share about her experiences with having brain cancer was an eye-opener to me and hopefully everyone else in the room. She looked great and spoke surprisingly well for having such a condition that put her at risk of losing her language abilities. When she said that she almost died because she could not figure out how to ask for a cup of coffee in English or Spanish, and then shouted it out in French, I was very impressed. She stated that French was a language she had learned later in life, like Spanish is a language that I am learning now. Her dedication to relearn the words in each language that she had lost and then writing book about the whole experience was impressive.

What I took from the presentation is that being narrow-minded does not provide you with the experience necessary to enjoy life and live it to the fullest. Learning a foreign language introduces not only the ability to be multilingual, but also the experience of a completely different culture, and in rare scenarios it can be a life saver. I intend to learn Spanish to the best of my ability to better my attitude towards learning and also my marketability to potential employers later in life. Being multilingual is an opportunity that most people pass up because they want to take the easy route and are too stuck in their way and do not care about other cultures, which makes multi-lingual’s more appealing to employers. Just learning the language is not enough though, you have to be immersed in it and make it part of your daily life to fully understand and comprehend the language. I now find myself occasionally speaking or having thoughts in my English language, then trying to translate them into Spanish. Without this practice, what you learn slowly fades and you have to start over.

I thank Professor Carmen Rabell for coming to Greensburg to present to us her experiences with foreign language and I wish her a healthy life.