The linguistic patchwork of you “At home, I feel free to speak Arabic peppered with words in French and English, and everyone understands me. When I am in Spain, I can only speak Spanish so that people would understand me.” This statement and its many variants share a common sentiment […]
María Ortega García
35 posts
“I don’t remember the time when speaking didn’t make me anxious”, she mumbled, still trying to smile but unable to look me in the eye. “I feel you, sister”, I wanted to say, to help share her painful load and to show her that I’m proof of living with that […]
Identity is not fixed. It’s more a multifaceted, fluid, ever-changing looking glass through which we view the world. Yet one of the most profound filters we use to interpret reality remains unchanged throughout our lives. As a migrant who left her native country 20 years ago, I have spent as […]
I originally wrote this article on 17th September 2011. Back then, I believed that the main purpose of language was communication. Now, ten years later, after ten years of teaching and exploring languages, my vision has changed a lot. In fact, I disagree with what I wrote back then. So, […]
I recently sent a questionnaire to my audience, asking them about their Spanish struggles and what they wanted or needed more of to improve and progress in their Spanish journey. One of the questions I asked was how interested they were in a poetry course in Spanish to improve their […]
Journaling in my mother language led me to write poetry, an activity I loved but which I stopped doing because I was young and influenceable and I believed then that if I couldn’t write good poetry (like the wordsmiths I studied in college), then I should not write at all. […]
Authenticity is a human need, like the need for belonging or attachment. When we are kids or teens, our need to belong to a group, fit in, trumps our need to express ourselves, and be authentic. This means that instead of listening inwards to our body’s clues about how it […]
Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world. – Malala Yousafzai 5 Transformative Books to Nourish Your Inner World Through Spanish and Expressive Writing Books can be more than tools for learning vocabulary and grammar; they can be companions for reflection, emotional […]