A bilingual student.

A lot of people think that it is excellent to be bilingual, but in my opinion, it’s not always that great. Of course you have advantages, for example: it makes it so much easier to find a job, companies always want employees to speak two or more languages; it also makes it easier to learn another language; it opens doors to communicate with all sorts of people with different nationalities. You can also help or even teach without difficulty. When you travel you can get your message across. It is also an advantage being able to understand songs, news, books and specially films, which is the most important thing, or one of them, because I can´t stand watching films that aren’t in original version, it’s fantastic being able to listen and understand the actual voices of the actors and actresses.
Despite all this you do get “lots of sticks” from other people that don’t appreciate bilingual situations. From an early age, I’ve been laughed at for pronouncing correctly, or for always having the right answers in class. Also teachers have expected a lot from me, I had a teacher who would have me marking my class-mate’s exams …
I’ve lived longer in England so I dominate the language better than I do Spanish, even though I don’t struggle, so it’s easier for me to learn in English, which makes me come to the conclusion that being bilingual makes the person easily adapted and change language while speaking and still, be able to understand which is different for those who aren’t bilingual. These have to process the information that they want to receive or send and then translate it into their original language.

I guess that it’s not that bad being bilingual.

By Natalia Hidalgo. 2º Bach. B