By Johanna Calderon
The Spanish Club’s purpose is to help others not lose their first spoken language.
Students speak the entire meeting in Spanish. It helps because when they started school, teachers required students to speak English when the students came to the U.S for the first time.
Club member Fatima Alvarado Platero is from El Salvador and she knew some English when she was going to school in El Salvador but she didn’t speak it at home, only at school. Things changed once she moved to California and english was new language for her. It was difficult for her when she started the ninth grade. She was surprised how well she was to learn english.
“We know how to speak Spanish, but we do not study spanish,” Platero said.
In a way some students know Spanish, but don’t know how to use proper Spanish, especially when they are writing to others. When they write in Spanish they don’t put accent marks because they forget or they don’t know how.
She is majoring in social service and being in the club will improve her proper spanish that will assist her with helping others.
Fatima wants to bring some culture about El Salvador to the club. El Salvador has delicious food like pupusas, pan relleno and others. The members are interested for students to try and enjoy the food.
“We’d like to have a cultural event and create an environment for Spanish speakers where they can practice,”Spanish Club Vice President Jessie De La Torre said.
Practice writing and reading gives them the opportunity to explore knowing two different languages. It would help the Spanish community who need it because they want to be bilingual and the members could get a really good job opportunity.
When some students come to the countries they can lose the language because some their parents stop speaking to them or they brought them really young and never spoke Spanish to them. Some of the students have parents who speak Spanish, but for some reason they don’t teach their children.
The club had an open house on Sep. 22 to get to know each other because students come from different parts of the world that speak Spanish because De La Torre doesn’t want the Spanish community to disappear.
They are going to have a presentation on cultures. The students want to know about other countries like El Salvador and know the culture. According to Platero, he beautiful country has tropical places. The students come from all over world and they are welcomed to the club.
The Spanish Club want to go to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to see Guillermo del Toro’s exhibit , but they haven’t set a date for them to go yet. One of Toro’s movies is Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno), a dark fantasy film.His exhibit is in LACMA until Nov, 27.
In addition the club wants to fundraise for the trips. They are planning on selling tortas and aguas frescas. Most of the ingredients for the tortas are donated from the members so they can help the club because of the small amount of money the club has saved.