My world language background is in Spanish. I studied for 3 years in high school, 2 years in college, and then married into a Spanish speaking family, which led to both an increase in travel to Spanish language environments and the opportunity to raise my daughter with native speakers.
In the meantime, I had other travel opportunities and travel abroad study opportunities and studied polite phrases for French, German, Flemish, and Italian. Not much, but I already had an ear for the Romantic and Germanic languages.
In 2009, I began with the Confucius Institute, but with a focus on program management and marketing. I grew up listening to my dad’s parents speaking “kitchen Cantonese” (language that was mostly family and food based), so I knew what I thought was some Chinese. It was -- but not Mandarin Chinese. So, I was first exposed to input in Mandarin in 2009. Since then, I’ve traveled to China quite often, and I work with a Chinese staff, so my input opportunities are great. After 7 years, I’m just about to begin my output phase.
With all that in mind, I began this blog to gather my learnings on my journey to gain new language skills and my learnings on teaching World Languages. Now I am working with Professional Development for my Institute, so I also plan to use this blog as a reflection space and to ferment ideas that I will then share in Professional Development sessions.
Thanks for joining me on my journey!
