Writing Task Between Two Worlds – Paola Capano

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1. Paola: NOW turn this into a story with scenes and CSD. I offer some suggestions in brackets:

   NEED A TITLE ______

   I feel like I have always been between two worlds in my life just because of the fact I am in bilingual. I grew up with just my mom, who only spoke Spanish, so I had pretty much no other choice but to learn Spanish as well. I learned English once I started school, so while I was young I was really learning two languages at the same time. I would speak strictly Spanish at home, and then go out to school where I would only speak English.

   This is how it has continued throughout my whole life, where Spanish is spoken only at home and then I go out into the world and speak just English. I remember in high school coming home from speaking and learning and just being myself in English all day long to then coming home to speak Spanish, it would kind of feel like I was entering a different world when I would come home. {Show me a scene of this switching languages and entering a diff world – What were you doing at school? What were you talking about? What happened when you stepped into the door of your home? Create a scene that is lively with details and description.}

   This often makes me feel like I am two different people, because my personality in English and in Spanish, around my family, just never comes out the same. I started to think about this when a lot of my family members or family friends would always tell me how quiet I am, or telling my mom that I don’t really talk much. [Give me the dialogue – WHAT do they say to you?]

   I realized that even though I do speak Spanish pretty fluently, of course English is my main language because I have spent more of my life with it as I learned it, made friends in it, think in it even though I know another language as well, and just overall have lived my whole life in it. Whereas with Spanish, it has only been spoken at home so it is only a small part of me compared to all I have experienced outside of my house. I feel like my family does not know my true personality due to the language barrier since there is a difference in dialect, jokes I can make, and overall how I act in general, [Mine your memory for the best scene that SHOWS this different You] which goes back to when I said it feels like I am two different people sometimes.

   One time I realized this was when i was in Dominican Republic visiting one summer and I was with my cousins who all speak Spanish. We were all spending time together in the living room

   [Give me the scene with details description and dialogue CSD Concrete Specific Details!]

   and they started to have a deep conversation about life and I realized as I was listening I was thinking in English but did not say anything the whole time because I could not contribute to the conversation the way I wanted to because I did not know how to say what I wanted to say in Spanish. [What did you want to say? How did you feel? What were you wearing, where were you? ] It’s weird because although I know Spanish, it’s just not mainly who I am and I think about it each time I speak to one of my cousins who I only speak Spanish with because if they were able to speak English with me they would see a whole different personality. {show me your SPANISH PERSONALITY then show me your American English personality}

   SO INTERESTING – can you create some scenes with dialogue to take me there to the room, time or year, conversation where this happened? Show me what they said in Spanish and what you understood, or what you wanted to say! Don’t just tell me – create scenes, dialogue, description and details.

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