The teacher originally wanted me to give the talk in Spanish but I told him that my Portuguese has kind of replaced my Spanish since the languages are so similar. We agreed that I would try giving the talk very slowly in Portuguese and explain words along the way if I needed to. I was nervous about how it would go and prepared some slides with lots of visual support and easy cognates in Spanish.
The presentation went really well and we had a blast! I was completely blown away not only by how high the students' skills were in Spanish but how quickly they picked up the Portuguese. I communicated to them in Portuguese and they answered back and asked questions in Spanish. We had so much fun! The neatest thing for me was watching immersion in action and I was impressed by how well it was working. After my presentation, I was able to sit and observe the third graders in the Mandarin immersion class. I think my mouth was open in shocked amazement the whole time as I watched eight year olds speak, understand and read Chinese like it was no big deal. Language immersion is such an exciting idea and goes hand in hand with international exchange!
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