Jordan Sazama Sazama 1

Olivia Stoltman

English 110
Spanish is More Than a Language

It was mid-December, the snow was falling down, and all anybody could think about was

winter break. The time was just around 10 am which happened to be 4th period, and I was half

asleep as a result of pushing off my homework until midnight the night before. I was still a

sophomore in high school and trying to figure out what I was good at. That day sitting in room

440, I found what I wasn’t good at, reading. This classroom belonged to Señor Hoffman, who

was one of the Spanish teachers in the high school and room was decked out with motivational

posters and funny catchphrases. His laid-back attitude and abundance of candy perfectly fit the

job for sophomores in high school.

Up to this point in the year I hadn’t touched a piece of homework, however this was all

about to change. As I sat in the classroom, I noticed a pile of books behind his desk, overfilling a

laundry bin. The idea that we were going to read this book never crossed my mind. The bell rang

throughout the hallway and whoever was left in the hall scampered into a classroom. Everyday

Hoffman would stand out his door and say “Hola” to every person who passed, so once the bell

sounded, he shuffled into the room. With a big smile on his face he asked, “Are you ready?”. In

response, all that could be heard in the room was a muffled “Sí”. Hoffman walked over to the

stack of books and told us to each to grab one. The book read “La Catrina”, the woman on the

front was dressed in all black and wore a large feather filled hat. As I opened the book, I hardly

could have told you what language it was written in. I knew some of the basic Spanish words but

nothing advanced enough to understand these complex sentences. This was the point where I
 Sazama 2

finally understood that reading was not my strong suit. In English I could always find a way

around reading such as using google to find summaries but unfortunately for me, there was no

summary to follow. Many thoughts were rushing through my mind like, “how am I going to

understand this?”, and “does he really expect me to read this?”.

Looking back on these thoughts I was wrong to doubt myself because this event turned

out to be an impactful moment in my life. As the weeks carried on, I expected to get better at

reading however once again I was wrong. I continuously failed to understand the concepts

covered in the few pages. I tried everything I could manage to attack reading the same way I

always had, however nothing worked. I tried to type each page into google translate and translate

the book into English, but the amount of time spent outweighed the results. I needed to find

something else to do. I needed a new approach to this project, so I started to read. As I sat on my

bed in the basement of my home, I flipped to the page and something felt weird to me. I never

read the books, I hated reading. As soft music calmed me as I started to read. I reached the

bottom of the first page, and I had no idea what I had just read. My eyes had glazed over the

words that flew into my brain and left without leaving a message. I was not ready to come this

far and give up, so I took one paragraph at a time and wouldn’t move on until I understood. This

pattern began to work, and the message finally started to make sense in my brain. Slowly, I

began to understand the story of La Catrina. I flipped through the crinkled pages and began

learning the colorful story of La Catrina. This was the first time I started to truly enjoy reading, I

never looked back.

Periodically, we would have short quizzes on the portions we covered in the book, in

order to portray that we understood what happened. The final quiz made me understand how
much I had improved because of the road of troubles I had overcome. As my teacher walked

around the room to pass out the quiz, I browsed the questions, written in both English and

Spanish and I was able to answer the questions before I even had a chance to move my eyes

down to the multiple-choice answers. It was at this point that I knew how far I had come in

literacy.

More time passed, and I could finally understand what was happening in the novel. Upon

completion of the last chapter I began to notice certain skills I possessed as a result of the

assigned reading. The skill of analysis was the first that I noticed. I could now take apart

paragraphs and pick pieces out of each sentence in order to understand what had occurred. It

took much more than a class in Spanish to form this skill, however this class had a large impact.

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to understand every single word in Spanish and even in English

for that matter, so I knew I had to take context from the sentence in order to form an idea about

the subject. In comparison, I needed to form synthesis in order to portray my ideas on the quiz. I

needed to take the ideas I had created and form responses going back and forth from English to

Spanish. Another skill that I learned to use was persistence. As I was laying on my bed ready to

give up, I needed to push through and keep going. I couldn’t give up, I needed to continue

working in order to be able to finish the book.

Without these three main skills of analysis, synthesis, and persistence I would not have

been able to start nor finish reading the book. By forming these skills, I was able to continue

working and not give up on the assignment at hand. I was able to bring these skills to other

classes where I introduced them into essays and other projects. Through skills I established in a

simple Spanish class in high school, they helped me prepare for the future wherever I may go.