Spanglish: Obtaining A New Langugage or Losing Two Languages – Sociology Essay
Languages like Society are evolving a lot nowadays. Although there has been a need for a lingua franca to facilitate communication between people from different
parts of the world, new created languages are having singularly success at fulfilling this role. Among all the different languages that exist today, there are two which are predominating over the world. Not only English is becoming an international language but also Spanish. As a consequence of the evolution of both languages, another ‘language’ is being created, that is Spanglish. Although there is a certain reaction against Spanglish, this kind of sublanguage is being used very quickly.
Spanglish is a mixed language made up of Spanish with the introduction of English terms instead of translating them or by using wrong translations. This language mixture is used in American regions or areas where a lot of Spanish people live. The number of people who speak Spanglish is so extensive that there are a lot of people who would not know to communicate with one of them exclusively.
The degradation of the Spanish language took place when technology evolved, above all when Internet arose. So, it can be said that Spanglish was created not only among American-Spanish people but also in the area of computer science and information. Although it is true that Internet is creating its own language which is called Ciberspanglish. It is also incredible to see how young people are learning this new language to communicate with people from other countries, increasing the improvements to international relations that result from the same means of communication which is Ciberspanglish. The Internet chose English as the main language but the translation into Spanish was so necessary that specialists decided on using Spanglish since the translation into Spanish was completely impossible due to the enormous number of anglicisms, technicisms and other terms related to the scientific field.
Fortunately, every time the number of people who become aware of the value of the language as the cultural good is getting bigger. They have to protect it and try to find the best translation for each new term. They can introduce neologisms, borrowings, loan translations, etc, whenever they think that it is necessary but with responsability and keeping the coherence of the language. In this way, our language will be improved.
Therefore, people have to defend their own language, Spanish, English, French, whatever it is, but avoiding the mixture with other languages. Everybody has the best cultural heritage that they can have: their own language. It has been claimed that only half of speakers who live today will exist in the too distant future. As they die out, other things are going to change, for instance, their history, their cultural identity and even their language depending on the influence that speakers can have on the world around them. So, all of us, like speakers, must contribute to improve a language as well as possible. Language is actually our means of communication and, for this reason, a language will evolve depending on the way in which speakers use it, since language is a universal domain that passes from one generation to another.
This article is based on ‘ESP students learning preferences: are the teachers aware?’ written by Dr. Siti Hamin Stapa. Nowadays, students learn in different ways: by seeing and hearing, reasoning logically and by intuition, even memorizing and visualizing. The method of the teachers also change. This author stresses the importance of co-operation in language classroom between teachers and learners.
The students bring with them their own necessities and preferences about learning and how they learn English for Special Purposes, this issue depends on students’ ability and the instructor’s characteristic approach to teaching. According to this author, the success of ‘teaching-learning’ is going to be linked with the co-operation of the students in the interaction and agreement between them.
This article wants to remark that information has to be exchanged about roles and expectations, both teachers’ and learners’ awareness of each other’s necessities and resources has to be raised and compromises have to be reached between them. It pays attention to the expectative of the students and the feelings of the teachers about what they can provide to the students. The author also points out the consideration of the diversity of cultures, it is essential to know their experiences, their learning needs, their learning styles and their expectations. Siti Hamin Stapa emphasizes the fact that needs and preferences are the most important things in designing a learner-centred curriculum.
A study conducted by Barkhuizen on the learners’ perceptions on ESL teaching/learning activities, revealed that the perceptions of students and teachers differs a lot from each other. The goals of this study were: the styles preferred by EAP learners and to investigate whether the teachers are aware of the students learning preferences. Some of the results are the following: students were asked about how they prefer to work in class (individually, in pairs, in large groups, etc) and whether their instructors were in fact aware of that. The result of this item suggests that students prefer to work individually or in pairs and all teachers think that students prefer working in pairs. This result indicates that the instructor is aware of the preferences of the students. The teacher also knows several activities which the students prefer at the moment of the learning like television and video, role plays, languages games, etc.
The findings obtained from this research provide us several significant values like the following: different kinds of learning that pay more attention to receptive skills do not appeal to students, there is a significant tendency among learners towards class content that observes both receptive and productive skills emphasised equally.
In conclusion, effective language teaching and learning can be reached when the instructors are aware of learners’ needs, capabilities, potentials and preferences, although, in this study, the author has only dealt with preferences. With these results, teachers can reach the students’ co-operation in designing syllabuses, doing weekly course planning and classroom management.