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I was born in the island of Puerto Rico by a monolingual mother and bilingual father. By the time I had an older brother and sister 5 to 10 years older than I.
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During this period my little sister was born, and because of the large difference in years I had with my other sibblings the arrival of the new born brought happiness to my playful spirit.
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Because at the time, we lived in a rather difficult community my parents looked for ways to keep us out of bad influences, so they entertained us with movies, cable TV and video games.
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While my mother was expecting her fifth and final child, we moved to New Jersey in search of a better life style.
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During our stay in New Jersey I had the opportunity to attend a year in a public school. Now as a language specialist I can conclude that this year provided me the base for my SLA.
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One year later, we came back to the island where I grew up along with my sisters.
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During my elementary education I did not use my second language oftenly. Althought, the formal education I recieved during these years help developed efficiently my first and second language skills such as speaking, reading and writing.
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A strong factor of my SLA was the interactions I had with my sisters. We used imitate what we on TV, and movies. We love to play with our Barbies speaking in English and with other accents. Of course, Barney had a special place in our hearts. My mom used to called the show the babysitter!
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During middle school, I had great experiences with language development; both first and second. During my teenage years I discovered my leader skills and I strived to achieve great competence by enrolling in clubs, conversational English meetings and even a radio program which was transmited through the local am radio station.
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High School helped completely develop al three language skills. Here I attended the advance English course where I had some opportunity to actually interact with my peers in the language and interested me in the field of langugae acquisition.
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College education finally gave me the full necessary tools to develop my SLA skills. Because I decided to specialize in ESL education I exposed myself to the language by actually interacting with other English language speakers and learn how to improve my language ability.
