I grew up in the El Paso borderland in a bilingual household. Although this is very common in the
region, I was an exception in my neighborhood because English was my first language and Spanish was
always secondary. Most children in my childhood neighborhood spoke Spanish primarily and found it
difficult to communicate with me. Nonetheless, Spanish did not come to me as quickly as it did to
others. I read a variety of books ranging from books about marine biology for children to Archie comic
books I was allowed to get from the supermarket. All were in English and I had only one book in Spanish
and it was an illustrated bible for kids. To this day I can remember most of the words that were written
on the first page. I did not fully learn the Spanish language until I was about six years old. In 1996, I
received a laptop computer for children for Christmas.
Since my parents were not familiar with computers and saw the gift as an investment in my
education, my older sister and I had to set it up. Unfortunately, neither one of us was computer literate
either. In school, teachers always turned on the computers and set up the lesson or game we were to
work on. Now that we had our own computer, were simply pressed buttons we assumed would get it
working. When we began to set up the computer, we made the mistake of choosing the settings for
Español instead of English. We never quite figured out how to revert back to the original settings and so
we left the settings in Spanish. Consequently, we spent the next few years playing games in Spanish.
Oddly enough, the numerous conversations that were held in Spanish in my environment growing up
were never able to give me the confidence to follow suit and speak the language, but playing games for
children on my Spanish children’s laptop was able to teach me enough vocabulary so that I could begin
to put sentences together and learn the basics of the language.
Although this was a triumph for my bilingual abilities, it became a complication in school shortly
after. Computers were beginning to populate classrooms in districts that had invested in technology. At
least thirty minutes a day were dedicated to allowing students to use computers. As I explained before,
younger students were stationed at computers that were already on the desired programs for students
to work on. As students got older, they were allowed to turn on the computers themselves and taught
how to reach certain program and work in and out of them. Since I had learned how to use my personal
laptop in Spanish, I felt a crisis coming on when the program vocabulary was different in English.
Although I knew what most of the words would translate into, the computer vocabulary seemed
incredibly different in one language from another. Furthermore, learning the proper way to type was
even more difficult as I had developed, bad habits reaching the keys however my small hands could.
Eventually, I was able to relearn my self-taught lessons on computers in English. Although this
made the learning process difficult at first, my computer and language abilities proved to be beneficial in
the long-run. I was able to understand and apply computer programs in two languages and understand
what each function was. My computer literacy was able to transcend language barriers that many other
students had and continue to have in my college career. Lastly, I learned lessons about the importance
of being in a technologically literate, or at least accepting, environment. Perhaps my lessons would have
been different had my parents been more familiar with computers and been able to explain the
importance of computer settings and programs. Nevertheless, my ability to become literate in two
spoken languages was accompanied by my developing computer literacy.