Fostering a sense of home in language through Spanish-learners’ daily memory work
When I tell someone I teach Spanish, I am usually met with one of two reactions: "I used to know Spanish, but I've forgotten after all these years" or a bewildered "¿Por qué?" I often think about what unifies my response to those two reactions, and I've found that it's memory. There is a sudden case of amnesia that overcomes Spanish language learners once they stop using the language, bespeaking a lack of connection to the target language. And I say this considering the two types of students I interact with: students learning Spanish as a foreign language, and students learning it as their heritage language. For the former, the language serves its purpose as a new currency in communication that they may or may not be able to exchange regularly. Regarding the latter, which is also my own heritage group, some of us are recovering from our own kind of amnesia. As a child, I spoke to primarily three people in Spanish: my abuela, my abuelo, and, when he was around, my papi. Spanish was what we might call my ¿first? language (L1), ¿maternal? language, ¿native? language . . . and all the other strange labels put on it. But none of these labels capture the struggle to remember it. That's my por qué as a teacher.
After ten years of teaching Spanish, I see that I've underestimated the gravity of the problem: all language is at risk of being forgotten. I learned this lesson over the summer when I noticed my abuela referring to multiple things as "tarecos" and "cosas." After one too many faltering "tú sabes . . . ," I took a flyer from a local grocery store, pointed at a few pictures, and asked her to identify the products. When I got to the image of the strawberries, she couldn't remember the word "fresas." After a few more incidents like this one, I went into panic mode: "What do we do? What resources are there?" I frantically searched for materials on Amazon to see what we could do to recall her Spanish. Finally, I came across a workbook that helped, El libro para personas mayores que potencia la memoria y el positivismo, by Grete Garrido.[1] It included questions that asked her to reflect on her favorite songs and movies, express opinions, read short texts, explain popular sayings, color pictures, identify objects, make lists, and categorize items.
But wait . . . why did these activities seem so familiar to me? Oh yeah, it’s because this is exactly what we do in the language classroom. Obviously, this doesn't cure dementia (unfortunately, nothing does). But it does slow down the loss of speech. On some days, my abuela remembers fresas, and sometimes she doesn't. The essential part is to ensure she's actively searching her memory for information, recalling vocabulary and memory relevant to her identity, and engaging with me in that process. Otherwise, as the adage goes, "If you don't use it, you lose it."
This experience, and others that are too long to include in this post, inspired my new course, "Im/migrants, Refugees & Memory," where we explore two questions to guide our study of the experience of Latin American im/migrants and refugees to the US: 1) What do Latin American im/migrants and refugees (re)member about their identity after arriving to the US? 2) What role do these memories play in creating, transmitting, and/or disidentifying their identities? Through the exploration of memory, students can engage in various Latin American and U.S. Latina/o/x cultural topics and texts related to history, music, dance, food, religion, family dynamics, etc. Through the comparative and relational examination of visual media and literary, cultural, and journalistic readings, students engage a variety of testimonies, narrative styles, registers, and genres to approach and contextualize these multifaceted diasporas. Additionally, I emphasize targeting all communication modes—interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational—to (further) develop the students' advanced-level proficiency in Spanish.
As a Bacca Fellow, I have been thinking about what this looks like and how to measure it. This semester I have experimented with a few activities to challenge the students' ability to explore and express their memories in the target language. For example, I've asked students to bring a meaningful object to class and tell us its story. Students requested more activities like this one, so we are now working on a habit diary, where we keep a log of our product and media consumption to expand our vocabulary and reflect on what we are doing and what products are leaving an impact on us regularly. We're actively thinking about what and who is forming part of our memory and identity. As mentioned, people need to feel connected with the language and create a sense of "belonging" to the language in their memories. While reading Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart, I came across Rumi's quote on the connection between self and language, "Heart is sea, language is shore. Whatever sea includes, will hit the shore."[2] In other words, if we don't put life into words and use language to express our feelings, experiences, and memories, we risk losing those parts of our identity. My interest lies in fostering that sense of home in the language by creating a space in everyday activities, moments, things, and habits to develop it.
That said, as the instructor currently teaching this course, I feel that I am different from the one that proposed the idea last summer. How to account for this evolution? I appreciate the space and encouragement I've received during my Bacca Fellowship to explore my interests and reengage my creativity as an instructor. Before the Fellowship, I had been holding myself to an unachievable standard of constant innovation rather than focusing on the balance between effective and engaging language pedagogy. Instead of stifling my intuition, over my refreshing meetings with Dr. Jennifer Ahern-Dodson and the Bacca Fellows I have been opening up to troubleshoot ideas and activities together and get perspectives from colleagues in and outside of my program. Throughout this experience, the questions they were asking themselves brought a new dimension to mine, directly influencing my course and giving me ideas for future iterations.
IMAGE CREDIT: Brian Prechtel, USDA/ARS, “Strawberries,” Public domain. https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/images/photos/featuredphoto/apr19/strawberries/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephanie Contreras
References
Garrido, Grete. El Libro Para Personas Mayores Que Potencia La Memoria Y El Positivismo. Books on Demand, 2023. https://www.amazon.es/personas-mayores-potencia-memoria-positivismo/dp/841174003X.
Brown, Brené. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. Random House, 2021.
[1] Garrido, Grete. El Libro para personas mayores que potencia la memoria y el positivismo. Books on Demand, 2023. https://www.amazon.es/personas-mayores-potencia-memoria-positivismo/dp/841174003X.
[2] Brown, Brené. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. Random House, 2021
