Spanish in America

          Finding credible sources is essential to writing a good paper. There are several important factors that one must consider when using another person’s work as a primary source. This process is confusing to begin with, but when considering all the information that is now available online, this process gets harder and harder. But it is the most important part of a research paper so credible and reliable primary resources must be filtered out of the universe of cosmic internet debris. There are several guidelines to use when finding good resourses that have been discussed and some of these guidelines will be applied to this article: http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/iv-language-use-among-latinos/    This is an article from the PEW Research center that discusses how Latino people identify themselves through language and the importance of the Spanish language, and what happens to the language as generations

     One way to determine if an article is credible is to use a source that has been deemed as credible. As discussed in the lecture given by Dr Díaz, the Pew Research center is a good source. He even used an article from Pew as an example of a credible source, so most articles found at this site will likely be credible. This article has easy to identify authors, which are a good indication that the source is credible. It also has a date, which adds to the likelihood of credibility. Dr Díaz informed that those are two important details.

     Finding a website that ends in “.edu” is a good way to find a credible source. This article is a “.org” which can be credible, but a .edu is almost always an excellent source. But the fact that this site has a history of being reliable is its best attribute.

     This particular article is an informative article. It is a survey given to Spanish speaking immigrants that tracks 3 generations of the family in order to learn what happens to the Spanish language in the United States as generations pass. It also asks the person to place value on the importance of English. There are strengths and weaknesses to this survey as some questions are good, and some are not as good.

     One strength of this article is that it provides a plethora of statistics that could be used to support a thesis. Statistics can be great, especially from a research institution with a reliable history.  One of the great questions asks Spanish speakers if learning English is important to the success of future generations. Another good question asked was how important is it for future generations to retain the Spanish language. (It was interesting to see such a high number concerning this statistic based on past American immigrants and their desire to lose their mother tongue.

     One weakness of this article is the vagueness of some of the data. An example is that one of the potential responses to the survey were “very well/pretty well” in reference to reading and speaking in Spanish. Those are hardly scientific responses. These are people rating themselves. What does that mean? No degree of understanding is really known. The numbers may be used, but they may not really say anything.  Another question asked in what language television was watched.  It is very vague as that really does give a picture of ability to speak or understand. It seems to assume that there was always a choice between the Spanish or English when turning on the television. But even though those are not useful questions, there are some that are.

     It is hard to imagine that with so many people who speak English as a second or third language that there would ever be a Standard Language Ideology, but as generations pass, the native tongue disappears and the new tongue appears. The English gets better and better, or does it?