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Carolina Lindner
Professor Rebeca Agosta
UWRT 1103
24 September 2014

Life as a multilingual teen

How much is our literacy a product of our environment? This question has been on my
mind since I began the search for myself, independently of who my parents wanted me to be.
How much are my skills, my interests, how much am I a product of what my parents exposed me
to as a child? To first answer that question I would have to look at as who I identify myself as. I
dont have to think long before I realize what it is that makes up one of the biggest parts of me;
my love for traveling and my skill for learning languages. At this point of my life, I am nineteen
years old and speak four languages fluently, with basic knowledge in two others. I have traveled
to most countries in Europe and Latin America and am now currently exploring the US. As
extraordinary as I know this may seem to some, it has simply been part of my life since my
earliest years. The sponsorship of my family and the resources provided to me has enabled me to
acquire those literacies. However, I do believe that my own curiosity and determination is what
got me to the literacy that I have accomplished.
My story began even before I was born, ironically, exactly here in North Carolina with a
Colombian woman who had ended up in the United States through a dramatic run away from
home with her secret service agent who arranged her a visa but then turned out to be married
love story. This woman just happened to be babysitting for the friend of a friend who was

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friends with this foreign German guy who was here on temporary work. Long story short, they
fell in love and when my mother was threatened to be deported after months of having broken up
with her secret service agent ex-boyfriend, my father proposed to her and decided to take her
back to Germany with him. And so it came that my mother from Colombia ended up far from
home, living in Germany and raising her first children. My brother and I grew up in a confusing
environment. With my mother mainly speaking Spanish, my mom and dad speaking in English
to each other and the rest of our world speaking German, you can imagine that we had a hard
time fully grasping what was going on. I remember watching a video from when I was a little
girl. I was talking about the how clear the ocean water at the beach was and that I was able to see
many little fish. The sentence came out like this: Und im water habe ich viele peces gesehen! I
know I was pretty cute. The unique relationship between my parents had a great influence on my
literacy at a very early age. In psychology one existing hypothesis about the critical period states
that before a certain age, if exposed to a specific stimuli, the brain has an easier time picking up a
new skill, in particular language. I believe that that is what happened to me and that this is why I
have such a talent for quickly picking up new languages.
As the time went by my mother eventually started to pick up German and the Spanish and
English language faded from our daily life into the background. By the time I hit 10 years I was
speaking mainly German and had forgotten most of my English and most definitely all of my
Spanish. At this age I did not understand the value of my literacy and I did not care to continue
working on it, despite my parents attempts to get me to watch English movies. Luckily, my
parents werent my only sponsors. I had two other people that greatly influenced me on my path
to literacy. One of them was my cousin Blanca Elcy. Following my mothers example and
desiring a better future for herself, she left our family in Colombia and moved to Germany to live

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with us. She was kind and caring and spoke only Spanish.
When she babysat my brother and I, we would play out our
wildest fantasies, communicating with any words and
gestures that we could come up with. This brought back a lot
of my lost vocabulary, along with a strange desire to be able
to understand what she was saying.
My other sponsor was a girl named Audrey. My
parents had met her parents while they lived in the U.S. and
they had kept in contact over the years. They would take
turns visiting us and us visiting them and their daughter and I
became close friends. Audrey was my sister from another
country. When I was with Audrey, I had to go back to
mimicking and digging for words and eventually, learning a
bit of English again. I wanted to understand Audrey and I wanted her to understand me, or else
we could no longer play pretend. My desire to learn more languages grew.
So as reviewed, I have had great sponsors on my side all my life. They supplied me with
endless resources; books, movies, games and anything else that could be used to get a child to
learn in a playful way. However, sometimes sponsors arent the only source of literacy.
Sometimes it is just being at the right place at the right time. Sometimes it is an event that is
unexpectedly thrown at you. Literacy can emerge from ones environment; such was my case. So
by the time I was 14 I was fluent in German and had basic literacy in Spanish and English. This
would have probably gone on this way for the rest of my life if not someday my dad had walked
up to me, sat me down and told me he had to talk to me about something serious: Daddys work

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is offering me another job position. We would have to leave home but it would mean less stress
for daddy and more money for the family. Curious little me answered: Where would we be
going? Dad: To America. Its a big step and mom and I want to hear your opinion on this first.
We wouldnt do anything that you are not comfortable with but it would mean a lot of positive
change for the whole family. I think it would be good for us. I thought about this for a couple
seconds: Okay, sure. That was it. That was how my family and I decided to pack up to our
things, after a similar reply from my little brother (an astonishing answer for an 11 year old boy).

My grandmother from Germany comes to visit us in the United States every second summer.

It is apparent that my literacy improved greatly once we moved to the United States. The
first couple years of high school were rough but I actually found it enjoyable to learn new
vocabulary and feel myself improve. It was really during those times of true culture shock that I
realized that travel and language were not just literacies pushed by my parents. Instead, I

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identified with it. I loved learning about it. I loved meeting new people and exploring the
differences of our cultures. My confidence rose and I looked at our planet in a new way. There
were so many places to explore! So many strange languages that sounded like music to my ears!
I had caught wanderlust and wanted to experience more.
Studying abroad was the first thing I had ever done all on my own. I decided it by myself
and did it for no one else. I did it for myself because that is who I wanted to be. I submitted
applications and asked for scholarships, went to the required interviews and eventually told my
parents about my plans. They were surprised but supported me fully. I had been rewarded a full
ride scholarship by a corporation involved with AFS. It was an unexpected sponsor that was
greatly appreciated. When I left a couple months later, I knew nothing of Portuguese but the
fascination drove me to learn it within months. Portuguese sounded like Spanish, only with
horribly wrong grammar. I almost felt like everything I knew about Spanish was the opposite of
what it was supposed to be in Portuguese. I learned quickly. I made friends even faster. By the
time my first month was over I had people by my side who were supporting me with the greatest
motivation. Watching me learn made them happy. Seeing them happy made me want to learn.
Additionally, I became close with many of the other exchange students in my city. We taught
each other bits of our languages. I got to brush up on my German with my best friend Nick from
Germany and Kevin from Switzerland. Anna and Chiara taught me a bit of Italian which is
similar to Spanish and French. I learned so many things about their cultures and it made me
hungry to learn more. Listening to someone draw out a life that seems so unfamiliar is
fascinating. The friends that I made in Brazil are some of the best friends I have ever had in my
entire life. Even now that I have returned to the United states, we keep in touch. I write them

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multiple times a week and speak to them on Skype at least once a month. This practice helps me
keep up with my literacy.

The best friend group anyone could ever ask for! This picture holds many nationalities:
Germany, America, Italy, Turkey, Japan, Brazil and Switzerland.

I speak four languages now and I practice them whenever I can. Meeting people that can
speak other languages makes me exited. I seek out opportunities to practice speaking whenever I
can. I am proud of it and feel it is part of who I am. I want to seek out a carreer that will give me
opportunities to travel. I am currently a pre-major for international business and feel it gives me
a great advantage. I am endlessly thankful for the sponsorship and opportunities I have received
through my family and friends. I am proud of myself for everything I have accomplished. I can

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see myself in the future learning more, seeing more and experiencing more than ever before. I
love languages and I love travel. Thats just who I am.