When lifelong learning comes with the job
Anita Savo (SED’08, CAS’08), training to teach Spanish, learns new languages to better relate to her future students.
Anita Savo (SED’08, CAS’08) thinks she has found the recipe for making it as a foreign language teacher — keep learning as many different tongues as possible, as a student and as an instructor.
“It’s very important to keep learning new languages if I’m going to be teaching languages,” Savo says, “so I can always relate to students who are learning a language for the first time.”
With a double major in modern foreign language education and Spanish and a minor in Italian (and even a few French classes under her belt), she already has all the right ingredients.
“I guess I have a natural talent for languages,” says Savo, who took Spanish in high school, grew up in an Italian-speaking family, but did not speak the language until college. In her spare time, Savo tutors students in Spanish and Italian through the Educational Resource Center. Next semester, she will travel to Madrid to work on her Spanish fluency.
For all these reasons, the School of Education recently chose Savo to receive $500 from its Fall 2006 Book Awards Program. Savo is one of 19 students receiving the merit-based award, to be used for textbooks, supplies, and software.
But even with all of Savo’s linguistic accomplishments, there remains the question: does speaking so many languages get confusing? The answer is no, she says. “I find that they complement each other because the grammar and vocabulary are similar.”