Savannah Glaves

C&T 598

Dr. Cho & Johnson

31 May 2019

A Language Autobiography: Savannah Glaves

Languages have been interesting to me since high school. Growing up, I was a native

English speaker. As every native English speaker, I am able to both read and speak with other

people in English easily. However, learning foreign languages has not been as friendly to me. I

have tried to learn Spanish, Chinese, and Korean so far. I learned Spanish for three years in high

school. I tried to teach myself Chinese and Korean in high school as well, but it did not go as

well. I began to learn Korean in college this past year, and plan to start Chinese in the fall as

well. Languages have been a major part of my life, but to varying degrees depending on when.

With English, my parents told me that I began both walking and speaking late compared

to other people. My hair and teeth came in late as well. Altogether, I was late when it came to

learning and growing. However, when I started speaking English, I learned to speak it with high

proficiency by the time I graduated high school. I learned English at both home and school. I

think the worst part of my English language learning was that I was told when I was younger that

I had a problem with pronouncing the θ and ð sound. However, today I am able to speak to

others with ease I am also able to read well. I received a departmental award in English in my

junior year of high school. There have been times where I even correct the grammar of my

parents. “Stop correcting my grammar,” my mom always used to say to me. With native English

speakers, I tend to correct their grammar more often since they have learned the language

natively, but with foreign language speakers trying to learn English I tend to do it less often.

1
Overall, I try my best to be kind to people learning other languages, as I have had my own

troubles learning languages myself.

The first language I ever learned after English was Spanish. Since Spanish is very similar

to English, I did not tend to have a lot of trouble with learning the grammar. Many of the words

are cognates with English, making it even easier. For two years in a row, I received departmental

awards in Spanish in high school. Rarely did I study. I normally studied for at most thirty

minutes per day. However, my teacher barely focused on speaking in Spanish. When I had a new

teacher in my third year of Spanish, I realized how terrible my speaking skills were. I was able to

read and write easily, but I stuttered or just laughed awkwardly when I was asked to speak in

Spanish with my teacher. We tried to play a game in Spanish, but nobody could understand what

was going on for the most part. We had to whisper English phrases to one another when the

teacher was not paying attention. The first two years of learning Spanish I had never learned any

conversational skills. We focused on listening maybe once per chapter or two, but there were

always Spanish subtitles in the videos. We never focused on speaking with one another. My first

Spanish teacher was the one of the nicest and most fun teachers I ever had, but the teaching style

was not helpful for effective language learning. My second teacher had to try and pick up the

mess, but he was unable to and we all struggled for my entire third year of Spanish. I did not

bother to take a fourth year of Spanish after that. Overall, learning my L2 language did not go

very well, but I can still read some Spanish books and articles.

Other than Spanish, I tried to teach myself both Korean and Chinese in high school.

Since I went to a small school, the only language that was offered was Spanish. On my own, I

was able to learn the Korean alphabet, Hangeul, within a day. However, I struggled with learning

Korean on my own because the grammar challenged me immensely, since Korean is an SOV

2
language, and English is a SVO language. I also struggled with learning Chinese because I did

not understand pinyin and how it converted into Chinese characters. It was extremely hard to

memorize the Chinese characters by myself. I was not sure in which order or direction to write

the strokes either. Without anyone to help me use the language, I struggled with both speaking

and writing in Korean and Chinese. This was why I decided to wait until college to fully learn

my L3 and L4 languages, where I could get the instruction I needed from native-speaking

teachers.

Going into college, I started out learning Korean as my L3 language. Since I had tried to

teach myself some Korean a few years before, I understood some of the very basic concepts of

both grammar and the alphabet. My teachers focused on many points of learning a language—

from the grammar to the listening to the conversations. Every Tuesday and Thursday there would

be a vocabulary quiz, and there was normally homework due every Monday, Wednesday, and

Friday. When we were in class, we would focus on all aspects of communication with one

another in Korean. There was normally some form of conversation memorization a week, and an

oral performance every few weeks where we had to answer questions on our own without any

help. I tend to study more than I did with Spanish. Overall, I feel like I am able to communicate

better orally in Korean than I ever was able to do in Spanish, despite having two less years of

experience in the former. As with most of the languages I have learned, I did receive high marks

in Korean. I received the John E. Niswander award at the end of this past semester for excellence

in beginner level Korean.

However, even with all of my language experience, I would still call myself a

monolingual. I am only able to speak well in one language, compared to some of my friends,

who are able to speak maybe one, two, or three languages with ease. I would define a bilingual

3
or even a multilingual as someone who can speak well enough to not struggle to talk to someone

in another language for extended periods of time. Despite learning a language, I am not able to

communicate effectively in any of the languages except for English. Being in Korea, I am only

able to understand a word or two of what people say to me. The thing I noticed most of us have

been struggling with overall in Korea is ordering food. I, along with many of the others on this

study abroad, am not able to effectively communicate in this community or any other

communities that do not speak English.

Nonetheless, I still have enjoyed learning these languages. My best learning experience

so far has been in Korean. Despite the large differences compared to English, the teaching styles

of my teachers in Korean has allowed me to speak more easily. Korean is an SOV language, so it

differs from both English, Spanish, and Chinese, which are SVO languages. The major thing that

helped me with learning all of my languages was connecting random phrases to words when

learning vocabulary, even if it did not make sense at all. I remember associating zanahoria in

Spanish with some random phrase like, “zany zany zany carrot.” These phrases make absolutely

no sense, but it has helped me with learning languages.

Languages have been a major part of my life since about high school. Coming from a

small-town high school in Kansas, I’ve mainly interacted only with Caucasians who have

probably never spoken with a foreigner. Spanish was my first foreign language, and that was

where I learned my love for learning foreign languages—even if I can’t speak in a full

conversation with another person. My love for languages, along with my love for Korean and

Chinese culture, motivated me to look for a university that taught many languages. It has also

taught me many things along the way.

4
 I never actually realized that not everybody thought in English. It took me the longest

time to realize that not everybody thought a word in English and then translated it into another

language. It is odd thinking that, because I can only think in one language fluently. However,

people like my roommate from this past year is able to speak both English and Spanish fluently.

She is able to think in both of the languages. Learning languages has allowed me to realize that

not everyone thinks the same and that there are many differences between every human being. I

have become more culturally aware by learning new languages.

The University of Kansas has allowed me to do many things by learning new languages. I

believe that I have learned a language better than I ever had before at KU than I did in high

school. It has shown me what is expected to be done when teaching another language. It has

shown me what it is like to try and speak a foreign language where one can rarely get input

outside of the classroom. Learning languages has given me much more cultural awareness than

anything else I have ever done. Small towns do not allow for much exposure, and thus learning

languages has allowed me to become more and more exposed every single day. With this

exposure to languages, I am able to know what and what not to do when I am teaching a class. I

know not to only focus on reading and writing, but to also focus on communication. Learning

languages has taught me many things, and I hope to be able to demonstrate these things as I

journey into the classroom in the next few weeks.