Aria by Richard Rodriguez

Premise:

• Parents conversing with their children in their primary language
• Children feeling uncomfortable in their classroom (in School)
• Difference between public and private languages
• Learning a new language in the home
• Adults learning a brand new language for the benefit of their children
• Silence between father and children
• Ashamed of primary language
• Forgetting or losing their primary language
• Remembering their primary language

Author's Argument:

Rodriguez argues that just because a new language needs to be learned for education and survival purposes that doesn't mean that you need to forget the first language that you learned (private language). While he had learned Spanish as his first language, Rodriguez needed to learn English in order to do well in school and to survive in the real world. While learning English the family decided to also learn English for the benefit of their children. When the family was learning English Rodriguez was loosing ties to hie father because would not speak English he would just stay silent.

Evidence:

1. "Supporters of bilingual education today imply that students like me miss a great deal by not being taught in their family's language. What they seem not to recognize is that, as a socially disadvantage child, I considered Spanish to be a private language."
2. "Because I wrongly imagined that English was intrinsically a public language and Spanish an intrinsically a private one, I easily noted the difference between classroom language and the language of home."
3. "The silence at home, however was finally more than literal silence. Fewer words passed between parent and child, but more profound was the silence that resulted from my inattention to sounds."

Questions/Comments/Points to Share

What I mad of this is that Richard Rodriguez was taught Spanish as his first language and when he went to school he didn't know any English. His teacher told his parents that he should learn English and that they should speak it in the homes. While his parents were learning English for their children a bond between him and his father was breaking. Now he was only speaking English he was forgetting about his roots, his first language Spanish. Then after a period of time some one came up to him speaking in Spanish and he remembered how it felt to speak that language. This article was east to read I enjoyed it very much I also like how he told the story I made me feel like this was happening to me. What I wanted to know was the bond between him and his father recovered did he continue to speak hie native language of Spanish?