More than language lessons
Enrique Casas ’19, a child of Mexican immigrants who grew up on Chicago’s South Side, spoke Spanish at home but never took a grammar class or read a book or wrote a paper in the language. Until he came to Cambridge. Intrigued by the description of a course called “Spanish 49h, for Students of Latino Heritage,” which teaches colloquially fluent students the basis of formal and academic Spanish, Casas signed up. He learned more than grammar rules. “My Spanish was pretty good,” said Casas, a computer science concentrator who during the first 15 years of his life spent every summer in Mexico visiting relatives. “I learned about accents and punctuation, but what I enjoyed the most was discussing issues of identity affecting Latinos.” Throughout the course, students learn to accept the challenges of growing up in two cultures and speaking two languages, said María Luisa Parra, senior preceptor in Romance languages and literatures, who...