實戰(zhàn)口語情景對話：Little Sister 妹妹

Kara: So, you mentioned there's a large gap between the oldest and you being towards the youngest. What do you think the differences growing up were between your life and their life and what were the advantages and disadvantages?

卡拉：你之前提到過，在你的家庭里，最大的孩子和最小的孩子之間有很大的年齡差距。你認(rèn)為在成長過程中，你的生活和他們的生活之間有什么不同?這種年齡差距又有何利弊?

Lupe: Well, I think for the most part, it was a great advantage to be one of the younger ones. I'm the second youngest, so having ten, you know, ten siblings, ten older than me definitely helped be growing up because I always had a lot of people to look up to and, you know, telling me right from wrong, which was always a great help. Financially, it was the biggest advantage because, you know, I hear stories from my older siblings about them growing up because they didn't have a lot of resources and financially my family wasn't very stable so as they got older, I started working and helping out with, you know, all the expenses. It really helped us little ones to really be, you know, grow up in a better way and have all the things that maybe they didn't. And also, one of the biggest advantages was that once the older, my older siblings started working, making enough money, you know, they raised enough money to move here to the United States, and bring the rest of us here and we had the great advantage of going to school here in the United States and being able tolearn another language, educate ourselves, continue to go onto college, which is something that my older siblings didn't have, so I'm very grateful for that. I think the only disadvantage of being one of the younger ones is a lot of the traditions that were being passed in our family from generations didn't quite make it to us when we moved here to the United States. We weren't able to do many of the things my older siblings got to do when they lived in Mexico, but you know I really can't complain because we have a lot of other things that they didn't have when they were little.

盧佩：我認(rèn)為，大多數(shù)情況下，年齡小的孩子有很大優(yōu)勢。我是家里倒數(shù)第二小的孩子，我有十個哥哥和姐姐，10個年紀(jì)比我大的哥哥姐姐在我成長過程中會幫我很多，因為他們會為我樹立榜樣，教我區(qū)分對錯，這有很大的幫助。當(dāng)然經(jīng)濟(jì)上的優(yōu)勢是最大的，因為我聽我的哥哥姐姐們說過他們成長的故事，當(dāng)時家里沒有足夠的能力，家里的經(jīng)濟(jì)狀況也不穩(wěn)定，所以他們漸漸長大以后，就要工作幫家里分擔(dān)開支。這使年紀(jì)小的我們能更好地成長，我們有的東西他們可能都沒有。另外一個大優(yōu)勢就是哥哥姐姐開始工作以后，他們能賺到、攢到足夠搬來美國生活的錢，而且還可以把其他家人都帶過來，在美國學(xué)校上學(xué)使我們獲得很大的優(yōu)勢，而且還可以學(xué)習(xí)另一門語言，自我教育，繼續(xù)上大學(xué)，這些都是我的哥哥姐姐們沒有享受到的，所以我對此非常感激。我認(rèn)為作為家里的老小唯一的壞處就是，因為我們搬到了美國，所以家庭里一些代代相傳的傳統(tǒng)并沒有在我們身上延續(xù)。我們的哥哥姐姐在墨西哥生活時做過的很多事我們都沒能做，不過我不能抱怨什么，因為我們擁有了他們小時候沒有的東西。