Posted 3:29 p.m. Wednesday, March 11, 2026
"How Do You Say?"--Literacy Narrative
Cómo se dice, “Are our expectations reasonable?” English is a standard; it comes easy for most children who grow up in the U.S. We rarely have to think twice about the words coming out of our mouth or being quickly scribbled on a piece of paper. We sit through years of English classes learning how to write three paragraph essays, where a comma goes in a sentence, and how to choose descriptive words. This is “normal”, but only if your idea of normal is the stereotypical American student. Nonetheless, we are growing up at a time where we still struggle with seeing diversity as a positive. Imagine you are walking down the street, it is a warm day, the sun shining through the giant fluffy white clouds. To your right there is a mother trying to keep their child from running across the street to look at a toy, there is laughter, conversation, a typical afternoon. As you are walking you hear the people passing by speaking a different language. You might stare, pause your conversation, or overanalyze the way that they are talking. Within seconds instead of considering this normal, it has become something different, unfamiliar, and wrong. Our expectation is English, but in an ever-growing world is this a fair expectation to hold?
Cómo se dice, “How do you learn a new language?” For as long as I can remember my entire school career, I was dying to learn Spanish. Unfortunately, foreign language was not offered until seventh grade, so until then I had to settle with knowing azul meant blue, gato meant cat, agua meant water, and hola meant hello. The idea of learning a new language felt incredibly powerful, opening countless opportunities for my future. When middle school finally rolled around it seemed like my moment had finally come; what I didn’t realize was the difficulty that came with learning another language. English has always come easy to me, for as long as my memory goes back, I’ve known
how to speak it. In my mind, learning another language would be as simple as I recalled, but I was miles from being correct. Although we remained at an extremely basic level in middle school, I remember for the first time in my academic career I could feel the amount of thinking that I was doing. Normally a sentence like, “I like the color pink” would take under ten seconds to write, but in Spanish it felt like being handed a thousand-piece puzzle, every piece a slightly different shade of the sky. This idea that I had always had of learning a language began to form into a reality, one much harder than I was prepared for.
Cómo se dice, “Why not take the easy way out?” When high school began, life was a chaotic mess. I was now expected to learn a language, attending class twice a week and the rest virtually. Language is something that only gets better with practice, the common cliche of practice makes perfect. However, sitting at a household that only speaks English, I was practicing Spanish for just over an hour and a half a week. When assignments were due, it was tempting and easy to use a translator instead of struggling with being wrong and basking in discomfort. I cared an absurd amount about my grades, so I took the effortless way out and cheated. If everyone else did it, why wouldn’t I? Looking back at this now, this was my biggest mistake. I think about people learning English as their second language, forced to navigate school without any short cuts. In the U.S., 21.7 percent of all people do not speak English as their first language. 70 percent of this population speaks Spanish, and of this 70 percent, ages 5-17, 79.8 percent spoke English very well. (U.S. Census Bureau). They were expected to learn a language and they did, without cheating, without a translator, without an easy way out. I was never held to this same standard, because in the school's mind Spanish was not of equal importance.
Cómo se dice, “Shouldn’t speaking be easy?” Throughout my high school career, I began to be less dependent on translators, and more confident in my abilities to read and write in Spanish. The hardest part for me was speaking. My brain felt like a toddler running faster than their feet would let them go. I knew exactly what I wanted to say but translating it into a different language, especially quickly, never came easy for me. This was uncomfortable, I was not good at it and my perfectionist mindset told me to give up. More often than not, I defaulted to English. I knew my Spanish teacher and classmates understood it, so when it wasn’t required, I stuck with what was comfortable. My generation tends to avoid stepping outside of their comfort zone. The idea of basking in uneasiness seems like asking someone to jump out of a moving vehicle. Whether it is trying to speak a different language, or something as simple as talking to a classmate, we conceal ourselves behind the screen of reality. So, following suit to many others, I avoided practicing the thing that I needed the most practice with. I would question why I was not seeing improvement, why it seemed so easy to other people, but I never wanted to admit that the reason was my own doing.
Cómo se dice, “Doesn’t everyone need a reality check?”. Everyone always says the best way to learn is throwing yourself in the driver's seat, getting the real-life experience. The summer going into my senior year my Spanish class took a trip to Costa Rica. Although this was a school trip, part of me thought this was going to be a luxurious vacation. In my mind we would be practicing on the beaches of Costa Rica, water rushing at my feet, running around in the sand. However, this was not the case, we were being placed in family homes and living lives like a standard civilian. When we arrived at our family's house, I realized I was not ready for the reality that was rushing my way. I knew enough Spanish to have basic conversations with the families, but this
time there was no Google Translate waiting for my beck and call. Sitting at the dinner table we began talking about our day, just like any other family would. We began discussing what we learned in our Spanish classes that day, but all a sudden, the conversation came to a halt. I had so much to say, but it felt like my voice had been stolen from me. I froze, lost for words, unable to express what I truly meant. Before I even realized it, English began pouring out of my mouth. I was socially exhausted, and I was so sick of having my brain work at twice the speed to get out a simple sentence. In that moment I realized something was wrong; as I looked across at their faces, it was blank. It looked like a classroom of students that had just been asked a question no one truly knows the answer to, as if I was speaking a language they did not know. That is when I realized, internally I expected this family that has only ever been taught Spanish, as it was their native language, to do the demanding work that I did not want to do and to know my language. I had given up and expected the world to adjust to me.
Cómo se dice, “How can we be better?”. I was in Costa Rica for ten days, barely over a week, and it was one of the most challenging weeks of my life. Nonetheless, it was also ten days in which I learned so much about myself, and about the language culture in the United States. We all live in a bubble, whether we admit it or not. Everyone likes to make assumptions of what life's like in other countries, but we aren’t willing to go and experience it. We sit comfortably, and judge others that are trying to break out of the bubble, but the people who are willing to go experience the world are often the ones that learn the most. I interviewed my aunt, one of those people, who spent three years in the peace corps, speaking Spanish, with various questions about the difficulties and major importance of learning another language. There was one answer that stuck in my brain, as a reminder, as an enlightener, and as a lesson. She
commented, “It is really challenging to learn another language, especially as an adolescent or an adult. Be patient with others who are learning English that you may meet in your day-to-day life in the U.S. For immigrants who come to the U.S., they often work crazy long hours, and do not always have the ability to take language classes to become fluent in English. Be kind, be understanding, and be supportive.” This comment gave me a revelation about my experience in Costa Rica. Everyone there showed so much patience as my classmates, and I struggled through speaking and writing in Spanish. They waited with smiles on their faces and worked alongside us to try and figure out what was being asked. Learning Spanish was incredibly difficult for me, especially considering the age at which I started, but I had all the tools by my side to learn it. I had teachers working with me every day, family there to support me and provide help, and an immersive experience of native speakers more than willing to help me along the process. Still, I complained about how hard it was. Looking back, I realize how fortunate I was to have those resources, especially when so many people learning English are often left on their own. What I saw as a struggle was an opportunity that countless others would jump at if given the chance.
Cómo se dice, “empathy”. I’ve learned that anything worth learning needs a sense of uneasiness, because would you really be learning if it did not? So, whether you hear a person speaking another language, struggling to say hello, or simply just trying to get a conversation started, remember that we are in a world full of words, sometimes it just takes longer to fully understand their true meaning.
Citations
U.S. Census Bureau. "Most Americans Speak Only English at Home or Speak English 'Very Well'." Census.gov, 1 Mar. 2023, www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/language-at-home-acs-5-year.html