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| ESL-English Place |
BILINGUAL INTERVIEWS |
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Special |
This interview is also given in extensive detail in order to illustrate just how much a person can accomplish if they take advantage of all their advantages! Sr. Magdaleno received good language training, mastered a second language sufficiently to become a teacher of it, then went on to make his living in the United States because of it! |
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Introduction |
| Sr. Javier Magdaleno is a true bilingual business executive who uses his second language of English as his first tool in business. He is now a Chamber of Commerce Director in one of the largest cities in the United States. For a Mexican native to reach this stature in an English-speaking world, Javier credits this success to good schooling along with family support as a young person. He took full advantage of all the schooling opportunities given to him. His beginning years in school did not do much for his English, however. Javier started school in Mexico City and spoke Spanish at home and at school until about the fourth grade, when he was forced to learn English after his family moved to Florida. Then soon came the reverse experience of moving back to Mexico, of having to start over again, and recertify his school work in Spanish. Then this experience happened to him again later two more times. An average person could have become discouraged and lost their advantage in the same situation, but Javier is not average in any sense. Read this most interesting and encouraging story of a person with a winning attitude who conquered a second language, even taught this second language, and now appears and sounds to onlookers like an American native! | ||||
| The Interview |
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ESL: Javier, you are one of many who are bilingual in your kind of work , and your peers and co-workers, as well as your clients, don't think too much about your spectacular ability to use and make your living with your second language of English. But the purpose of this interview for ESL-English Place is to give anyone interested in gaining English literacy a story of encouragement, some reassurance that learning a second language is really possible for them or anyone who really tries to do it. You are able to converse fluently in English with anyone on almost subject. Most beginners in language have their doubts they can ever do this. You are a perfect example of someone who studied and worked hard to be able to use English as your primary working language, and you prove to everyone daily that this goal is very possible to reach. JAVIER: Yes, I can do it now. But it took a long time. And it wasn't easy at first. ESL: Well, Javier, don't keep us in suspense any longer! Tell us this real-life story of how you learned to speak and use English so fluently! |
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| His Early Years |
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ESL: Javier, did you start learning English as a young child, or later on? JAVIER: Actually, it was when I was a young child, 6 years old. ESL: Well, this gave you a great advantage to be exposed to English so early in your education. JAVIER: Yes, it sure did -- and I was very lucky that my Dad was transferred to Miami, Florida, when I was six, where I was put into a summer school for a couple of months. There weren't any Hispanic students in the school at the time to help me out, either. I had to use sign language to get by. The only English I knew then was from some little songs. ESL: I wish our website had a sound track to demonstrate to our clients at ESL-English Place the fact that now your English is almost flawless, without any noticeable accent. You have come a long way since your early years. JAVIER: Yes, I know. But I had a terrible time at first. I had started school in Mexico City, in Spanish, of course. I remember that my teacher there was very concerned for me, and told me I would have a very hard time in the United States because I was so poor in English. We studied a little English in the Mexican public school, but not much. And I really struggled with English at first. I just couldn't speak it. |
| His Dad spoke 8 languages, and taught him many things |
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ESL: It sounds like you almost had a complex about it. JAVIER: Yes, I did. But my Dad brought me out of it by teaching me to use all my senses, by learning to watch and listen and associate body language with meanings. My Dad got his first graduate degree in the United States, and eventually learned to use 8 languages, so he knew what to teach me. ESL: Now wait just a minute! Let's stop here and talk about your Dad. Most people never learn 2 languages, much less 8 languages. JAVIER: I know, but it's true. He's from Mexico, and Spanish was his first language. Then next was English, then came Portuguese, Italian, French, German and Russian. He finished a doctoral degree in Sweden and, of course, picked up Swedish there. So, that's 8 languages. His work required him to be all over the world, and this need was part of the reason he learned all these languages. He had complete fluency in English and also did some formal English teaching along the way. ESL: Well, tell him we have to publish an interview with him to tell us how he managed to learn all these languages! As part of this interview series, we have here on the website a very brief story of someone else who did this, Jan Ignace Paderewski, the famous Polish pianist and patriot who became President of Poland in l920. Paderewski, like your father, had mastered and used in public 6 languages, and privately was known to converse in several more. And, I was never able to find any record of his studying any language formally except for a few lessons from a Spanish tutor -- he loved Spanish poetry, it seems. He gained the reputation of the man who simply "knew everything", a person who was one of mankind's greatest minds. JAVIER: That's interesting, because my Dad also likes music, and seems to know everything, too, about music or any other subject you want to talk about. I always had the greatest admiration for him and for how he helped me along the way. |
| The times when he felt progress with English |
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ESL: So, tell us more of what happened to you as a student of English, and some of the times when you knew you made progress in learning the language. JAVIER: Well, I had the advantage of getting started working with English early as a child. I had no choice -- I had to become functional in English about the second grade where there were no Spanish-speaking teachers or students. I stayed in Miami for about 3 years, and then my Dad got transferred back to Mexico City again. So back I went to Mexico, and I had to certify my schoolwork all over again in Spanish. Another year passed living with Spanish, and then, of all things, my Dad got sent back again to Miami. This time around we went to yet another area where there weren't any Hispanics. ESL: Wow! What a bumpy ride! What did you feel about all this disruption! JAVIER: At the time it was very hard for me, but it really helped my English, of course. I was a good student, and I wanted to do as well as I could, because I had been taught to work and study hard by my parents. I never made it to becoming the top student in an English-speaking environment, but I was never lower than number 5 in any of my classes. ESL: So how long did you stay in the U.S. this time? JAVIER: It was almost 5 years. Then, guess what? My Dad got another offer he couldn't refuse, and back we went to Mexico City again. ESL: Did you have to recertify your schooling all over again like you did before? JAVIER: This time I got to go to an American School in Mexico City. There are many such "American" schools now, but then those schools were set up for Americans in transit. But I was able to graduate from High School there, and then to start college at the University of the Americas in Puebla, about a two hour drive from Mexico City. This University was also oriented to Americans studying in Mexico. ESL: Well, Javier, with all these ups and downs and changes, when did you begin to feel like you made progress in using English? JAVIER: When I finally got to settle down and finish an English-speaking High School was the time when I knew I could speak and use English. Then after being able to go to an American-style college immediately after High School, I really began to feel at home with English. I had the marvelous good fortune to study under a famous English scholar and writer while in college, named Edward Simmons. He taught me so much. I learned from him, finally, more about how to write in English, which had been so hard for me. |
| His family helped him retain his Spanish-speaking ability |
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ESL: What happened with your ability to speak Spanish after you began to use English all the time? JAVIER: All these years I had been able to live at home, and we always spoke Spanish at home for everything, unless, for example, we had visitors. This was true when we lived in the U.S. or when we were in Mexico. That way I never felt like I lost much of my Spanish-speaking skills. |
| Time lost turned out to be time gained |
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ESL: You must have lost some school credits in all this moving around. JAVIER: Yes, I lost perhaps 4 years of studies during 12 years of changes. But in my final college period of studies I was able to get a 50% scholarship by teaching English, so this helped me with both my English development as well as my school expenses. Then I spent another year in Miami by myself studying and working, including English, and also doing more teaching of English. I also did some outside teaching of English in some of the commercial English schools in Mexico, and I learned a lot from their methods. ESL: What good did all this English background do for you, other than just be interesting, and make you a more cultured or educated person. Javier: After I graduated from college and went looking for a job, I was hired by General Motors, and it was my English ability that got me the job. Then in 6 months I got a better job with Pepsico, where I traveled constantly between the U.S. and Mexico. I went to Puerto Rico to work with our job-force there. After that I was hired by Nintendo strictly because of my bilingual abilities. |
| How he did it is clear to him |
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ESL: Javier, did it ever occur to you how you became proficient in English? Did you ever think about the methods you used, or what you did to finally master the English language? JAVIER: Yes, after teaching for a while, and then working in American or English-speaking companies, it did begin to come to me what had happened. I always had loved music, and I listened a lot to songs with English words. Another thing was the wonderful encouragement I got from my family to work hard and to do well at everything. But I also enjoyed being able to read and speak English for its own sake. It wasn't hard for me to practice it as a study, or to want to be good at it. I just liked it, liked using English, and felt happy to be successful with it. ESL: You fit a pattern of successful second language speakers we have interviewed. It seems the first criteria for successful language acquisition is the person's own desire to do it, a passion that says inside one's self that they must be able to do it. JAVIER: Yes, I think this is true. This is how I felt about it. In my heart I felt like I just had to be good at English, apart from the practical side or advantages of knowing English, such as the help it gave me to get better jobs. ESL: Could you have acquired English without learning it in a school? JAVIER: Well, I can't deny that I went to school and learned a lot of English because of the exposure I received in schools. Yes, going to school helped me a lot. But many very important things helped me maybe more than going to school. Certainly my Dad's ideas, my interest in music, and my exposure to an English-speaking country or living in the U.S. were not formal schooling, but they were just as important in my development as any school. I think my own desire to do it was the real secret to my success, although to sum it up, it had to be a combination of all these influences together. |
| WOW! Continuity, Desire and multi-lingual people! |
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ESL: ESL-English Place tries to teach that success with any skill, and especially language, requires one ingredient more than all others, and that is CONTINUITY -- continuous application and use and practice of doing that skill. We would say that you were fortunate to have a lot of continuity in your study and practice of the English language. You lived English. JAVIER: Exactly! Exactly! And my wife helped me to see this fact. She is trilingual, and speaks and uses 3 languages very well. She also earns her living using English, as an executive for an American company, just like myself. She learned both English and French in Mexico. She was able to live about two years in the United States during her teenage years, but other than that, most of her study was on her own, although she did attend some English and French classes in Mexico. But her French was acquired mostly on her own. I think we both learned language because we just really wanted to do it. |
| A living, working and successful role-model |
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ESL: We wish every young person in the world today could read about your experience and hear your encouraging words on how to be a good student. And how to learn a language! Thanks so much for giving your time and your enthusiasm in this interview. No doubt it will inspire everyone who has the opportunity to read it, and will give them the encouragement to, as we say in English with an idiom we use a lot, "... to keep on keeping on!" Javier, you are a study in perseverance and continuity. Thank you so very much for sharing your thoughts with us! You have shown us that someone can learn a language if they have the desire to do it! JAVIER: Yes, you can. You're right. You can do it. But you must want it to ever make it happen. This would be my message. |
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