MLO 1 lANGUAGE pROFICIENCY
- 1.1 Speaking ability: The student is able to satisfy the requirements of everyday situations and routine school and work requirements. Can communicate facts and talk casually about topics of current public and personal interest, using general vocabulary. The student can be understood without difficulty by native speakers.
- 1.2 Listening ability: The student is able to understand main ideas and most details of connected discourse on a variety of topics beyond the immediacy of the situation. Comprehension may be uneven due to a variety of linguistic factors and topics.
- 1.3 Reading ability: The student is able to read prose selections of several paragraphs in length, particularly if printed clearly and if prose is in familiar sentence patterns. Reader understands the main ideas and facts but may miss some details. At this level the student can read such texts as descriptions, narratives, short stories, news items and routine personal and business correspondence.
- 1.4 Writing ability: The student is able to write routine social correspondence and join sentences in simple discourse of at least several paragraphs in length on familiar topics, and is able to express him/herself simply with some circumlocution. Good control of the most frequently used syntactic structures, but makes frequent errors in producing complex sentences. Writing is understandable to natives not used to the writing of non-natives.
- Response:
- Every Spanish class that I have completed at CSUMB has contributed to the accomplishment of MLO1. During office hours, the professors encouraged the use of the target language, so in class and out of class, I practiced speaking and listening. Writing and reading assignments were assigned in nearly every Spanish class I took towards my emphasis in Spanish linguistics. It is fair to say that eighty percent of the students in the Spanish major are native speakers, so Spanish was spoken every day in, and out of class. I lived in Watsonville for my entire career at CSUMB, and there I also practiced Spanish almost everyday. For the service learning requirement, I joined the Watsonville Science Workshop. There, I helped kids build projects and helped discover creativity. The director of the shop only spoke Spanish. She is an amazing woman, and a community mother. She is a patient and understanding person. During the sessions that I volunteered she taught me many spanish words, and happily answered questions that I had about Spanish. She understood and respected my mission to learn Spanish. Naturally, in turn, I tutored her in Algebra because she is studying to take the GED. All of the kids in the were shop were bilingual Spanish and English speakers. I found that the kids would rather speak in English. It is almost as if they are more proud to speak English, and thus, shy away from the use of Spanish. During my visits I promoted the speech of Spanish. I explained how important and valuable it is to speak well, both, Spanish and English. I tried to make them feel special and proud to be bilingual. There are high school volunteers at the workshop as well. The high school kids are from Watsonville also. I value very much the relationship I developed with the older kids. They asked me questions about college and life in panorama. I edited papers for some of them, and in turn, they corrected my Spanish when necessary. I love the Watsonville Science Workshop, and I still may visits there to this day.
- _Daily Routine at the Watsonville Science Workshop.pdf