EMILY STOKES
Class of 1999
US Spanish Teacher, Since 2005
I’ve become very interested in helping my students adopt a more abstract, objective view of language. Students often approach language learning with the assumption that their own language is inherently and definitively logical. When first exposed to differences in a second language, they often react with a deprecating, "Why would they say it that way?"

I counter with, "Why do we say it this way?" One of my greatest pleasures is to watch students gradually abandon their natural distrust of a second language and begin to genuinely enjoy the nuances that language offers them.

My goal is for all my students to experience, if not fully understand, the paradox that thought and meaning can be simultaneously universal, regardless of the idioms used, and distinct, colored and confined by each individual language.