English?!

Travelling back and forth between the United States of America and Germany comes as naturally to me as breathing because I grew up speaking two languages (English and German) on a daily basis and owning two passports – one from each country. As my mom comes from a small town roughly ninety miles south from Chicago, USA, my siblings and I used to spend almost every summer holiday visiting our grandparents and aunt in Pontiac and Chicago, IL. Although I have lived in Germany for most of my life, I also call the United States my home for many reasons: as a little girl I loved my American Cabbage Patch Doll and Froot Loops, at sixteen I got my driver’s license in Pontiac, at seventeen I graduated from Wheaton North High School and at twenty-one I spent one year working at a Mexican restaurant in Wheaton while visiting the College of DuPage.

When my friends are asked to describe me, they always say that I am the crazy American-German, who loves kitsch, speaks Denglish and wears red, white and blue on the 4^th of July. So, I guess, when it came to choosing the subjects I wanted to teach, it was obvious that English would be one of them and, as a pediatric nurse, Biology would be the other. Since money is tight when you go to school, I tutor 7^th graders in English and Math to earn some extra money to spend. I really enjoy this “job” because I like to work with children and I learn, by experience, what it is like to teach them.

For the future, I would like to improve my English skills while I am still going to school myself. I believe that one of my weaknesses in English is due to the fact that I grew up bilingually. As I understand and speak both languages quite fluently, I sometimes, for instance, overlook Germanisms in my own or in other people’s essays because the phrases or words make sense to me. However, my weakness is probably also my strength; speaking German and English, almost native-like, is a huge advantage and I am proud that my mother had the stamina to teach her children two languages at the same time although she was faced with a great deal of prejudice in the 1980’s.