I have realized that my experiences with my tico family
represent Halliday’s 7 functions of language. The first function is
instrumental and this is when I try to use my Spanish to express my needs to my
family. First I need to find out where my bedroom and bathroom are. Then I need
to know how to use the shower. I also need to know when my momma tica can do my
laundry. I use the regulatory function of language to tell them things I need
to do. These include when I needed to leave, what time dinner and breakfast is,
and when I am getting home. Then the last functions are interactional and
personal and these evolved better after I took several of my Spanish classes; I
learned how to interact with my family more and get to know them on a more
personal level these two weeks more than my first week with my tico family. It
is hard to reach ** and ** because I am not fluent enough in Spanish yet. I did
not realize until this trip that language has different functions. I have never
heard of Halliday’s 7 functions of language, but as we were discussing in class
about what each function means I started to connect the functions to my
experiences with my tico family right away, which is great because I have
experienced these functions first hand and it makes them more meaningful to
me.
As a future teacher I can truly understand what it is like
to by in the shoes of my ELL students. If I have ELL students in my classroom
that just arrived in the United States and are learning English for the first
time I will be able to empathize with them because I was in their exact same
shoes in Costa Rica. I will understand that they first need to just express
their needs in English, then express things they need to do, and from there
they will be able to learn more English to move into the other functions of
language. I see now that learning will be difficult for my students if they are
still learning the language. If my students are not yet fluent in English then
how are they supposed to learn new concepts if they do not even know a lot of
English words to help them understand the new material?
Nice post! Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Aside from English and the Asian languages, Spanish is spoken on several different continents and is one of the most adopted languages for international commerce and politics. I am also learning Spanish as a second language and i know it has lots of benefits.
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