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German Citizenship
I was born here in the US, but because by mom is still a German citizen I have dual citizenship with Germany and the US. -
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German as a Native Language
My mother spoke to me strictly in German while I was an infant. Me and my older brother both first spoke in German as children. Right before I attended pre-school she had gotten a new job and had less time to spend around me and my brother and less time to work on our German. My dad primarily spoke to us in English and as we started to go to school we began the process of losing the language that we had first learned how to speak in. -
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German as a lost language
German was my native or first language. At around the age of 4 or 5 I was no longer being regularly exposed to German. Research has shown that it is possible for someone too loose their first language all the way up until around 9 years old if they are no longer exposed to that language. This is what happened to me and I am deeply upset that I am not a bilingual adult even though I currently still hold my dual-citizenship with Germany. -
Struggles with academic English
The way sentences are structured in German are different than in English and I had a hard time comprehending what the "correct" way to write a sentence was. After reflecting back on the experience, I have realized that I had been playing language cop and it impacted how and what I thought about my writing skills. I think I would have benefited from having supports in German by helping develop a greater metalinguistic awareness. -
Trip to Germany
This was my first extended stay in Germany where I wasn't a toddler. I was there for 2 months and was immersed into the culture of that language. This helped me become interested in wanting to learn the language so that I would be able to interact with my environment and communicate with peers. -
Unintended use of German
After having stayed in Germany for a period of time and practicing the language, upon my return I had been catching myself accidentally replying to others in German. For about a week or two it was instinctual for me to respond to conversations in German. At first this phenomenon reminded me of code-switching, however these are not the same thing as what I had experienced did not involve mixing the two languages into something else, it was more of an knee jerk reaction. -
Trip to Poland
When I was in the 6th grade I had made a independent trip to Poland to visit some of my family. There was only one person, my uncle, who spoke any English. I had very little exposure or understanding of the Polish language prior to my trip so I had ended up learning an extensive amount of Polish in a very short period of time. If there were more formal and academic supports for learning Polish available to me then I think that this learning experience could have been more profound and beneficial -
New Understandings
My experiences with learning language will shape my future as a teacher. After having dealt with various teachers playing language cop, I had developed a self critical perspective of my own writing. I would learn to become a language cop myself, and this is something that has negatively impacted my writing flow even today. As a teacher, I want to make sure that none of my students experience what I did and think that their academic skills are lower than others because of language barriers
