Julius Erskine
Dr. Kelley
EN 101
February 4, 2015
A Way with Words (The story of Sofia Gomez) Young kids are like a sponge to everything around them. In the younger stages of a child’s life they are sensitive to everything they see or hear and this is the time where their foundation is built. Children as they grow up can remember things from when they were young that can be life changing for good or bad. Sometimes you may ask your younger siblings or little cousins, “Why do you ask so many questions?” Or even “Why are you so curious?” The answer to that is “When you’re a child, everything around you is a learning experience”, as Sofia Gomez stated in Mother Goose in Monterrey. There are many things to be learned as child as simple as tying your shoe or even learning how to fasten your pants, but those are things you will use for the rest of your life and after reading my essay you will fully understand these concepts I am presenting to you. When Sofia was a little girl she grew up watching Disney movies that were in English because her family did not have cable. She watched these movies over and over until she could then remember just about every line word from word. These movies were thought of as just a pastime for her growing up but in actuality it was a learning tool without her even realizing. These movies helped her learn English. Sofia grew to understand that as a child your mind is so much more receptive to things you aren’t used to than when you’re an adult. The mind is such a terrible thing to waste especially when you’re young because there is so much to be learned. Sofia and I agrees that introducing a second language to children is a huge advantage. It’s not only opening their mind up to foreign things but it’s also broadening their horizon. If you can get a child to think open-minded about learning new things that will be a trait that will take them far in life because even when you get old with gray hairs you will still be learning from situations and people around you. It is not good to carry yourself as if you know it all already. If you pay attention daily you can learn new things. I’m not just speaking on the fact of you going to school and sitting in a classroom to learn. I’m stating that if you listen to the conversations around you or if you just sit back and observe everything that may be going on, then you can actually learn something without even trying to.
Sofia’s English education mainly started at home. She grew up in a town called Montemorelos, only an hour away from Monterrey, Mexico’s second largest industrial city. Every so often her family and she would take a trip to McAllen, Texas to go shopping for clothes, household items, and a new movie if the family had enough money. Her siblings and she loved watching movies in English. In fact, they would avoid buying movies in Mexico because the dialogue wasn’t the same if it wasn’t in the original language (English). Also, her siblings and she read a lot of English. Her aunt was head of the English department of a school in Monterrey. So when her aunt ordered text books her mom would ask her aunt to order a few extra for her children. Every night they read a Spanish book and English book to the point where they began to be able to memorize the words. They began to read so much that Sofia’s mom would have to take a piece of scotch tape to put the books back together because they used them so often. They even so happened to have numerous copies of the some books because her mother figured four kids would need a bigger home library. Sofia attended a small Catholic school, where she received very Basic English lessons for only a couple hours a week. Also, her mother wanted her siblings and her to learn more English, so they took private afternoon lessons with a teacher from Canada. Sofia and her siblings also traveled to Canada to attend YMCA summer camps, where her brothers and she got the opportunity to be introduced to an English speaking environment. The first time she noticed that everyone around were speaking English, she had no choice but to try to speak it back. Just being around children hearing them speak English is a learning experience for her. She may not be as fluent as the other kids but she will be able to get familiar with the English language first hand.
The experiences Sofia had going to Canada for the YMCA summer camps came in handy for when her parents decided to move to the bigger city to pursue a better school education for Sofia and her brothers. Her parents began on a strenuous search to find the right school for Sofia and her siblings. After all the searching they narrowed the choice down to two schools. The first one rejected them without a thought. The people in charge of admissions said they did not have the necessary bilingual education to be on track with the rest of the students. Although they did not attempt to test Sofia and her siblings on their English or anything else that they knew. The reason they were turned away was because the people in charge of admissions saw the name of the Catholic school they last attended. Although the American Institute of Monterrey (AIM), welcomed them with open arms. The AIM even assisted on making their transition from a monolingual school to a bilingual school. The summer Sofia moved to Monterrey, she was assigned a teacher to help her get ready to enter a bilingual school. Her teacher name was Miss Ale and she taught on a ranch a few minutes outside the city where she lived. She taught Sofia some math and spelling but mostly in English grammar. Miss Ale had these two black Doberman dogs and Sofia could remember the how afraid she was of the dogs. At times she would let Sofia work alone and the dogs would just circle the table, or occasionally growl at one another. Sofia said, “I felt like the dogs were judging me, and their presence forced me to concentrate on her work.” A few weeks went by and Miss Ale talked to Sofia’s mother about her progress and how well she has been doing. But, while Miss Ale and Sofia finished their remedial course, her brothers were outside playing with the dog that she thought was so bad. Then after she got done she went outside to join them and realized that the dogs weren’t so scary after all. Sofia started school at the AIM in August 1998. Four years later she was granted a an excellence scholarship for high school from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Superior Studies (ITESM), the largest combined high school and university in all of Mexico.
With this conclusion that goes to show that what you learn at home is very vital for your future. If Sofia had not watched those Disney movies or read those books when she was younger then things might not have come as easy as it did. If had not went to those YMCA camps in Canada she probably wouldn’t be as fluent today. When you’re young everything you hear or see you will absorb and that’s the best time to teach something challenging like a second language.