by Soledad Guerrero González
During the 2022-23 academic year I was an OSA in the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Department at Dickinson College, one of the most enriching experiences of my life. I am from a coastal city in the south of Spain, Malaga, and living in Carlisle and getting to know the Dickinson community was a real breakthrough for me. I discovered that I could have a home somewhere other than my city, and that I could carry out as many projects as I set my mind to. During that year I did many things that went beyond my comfort zone (apart from living in another continent for 9 months), such as studying literature in German, translating a literary work from Spanish to English, working in the archives of the Library, or teaching Spanish language classes.
In particular, I started a project that I was really looking forward to: introducing the Linguistic Landscape into my Spanish lessons. That is, to teach my students the significance of the language they were studying through all the written messages in Spanish that they find around them. In the United States, Spanish is considered a secondary language because it is not official, but it is one of the most widely spoken languages after English. A lot of culture, Hispanic heritage and linguistic imprint is painted on graffiti, billboards and posters, and that is why I wanted my students to also participate by creating their own posters, thus engaging in the community that they are now also part of by studying Spanish. That idea became a project, and now it is a scholarly publication of which I am proud.
Thank you, Dickinson College and Carlisle community, for inspiring me to develop this idea. Thanks to my students, for following me in this new way of understanding Spanish learning. And thanks to this wonderful Department, to which I owe so many lessons learned and joyful moments.
Here is a link to the published article:
https://elespanolporelmundo.eu/index.php/epm/article/view/113/153
