Salient Identity

I’m teaching Spanish 101 this month. There are 29 students in my class. This is week 2 of class, and we are learning to use adjectives correctly. Students are asked to create short descriptions of themselves and people they know. For example: “I’m athletic. My friend is kind. My teacher is old.”

Out of 29 students, 4 started the exercise by writing “I’m liberal. My father is conservative.” 0 students wrote the opposite.

Whatever you lead with in this kind of exercise is your salient identity. Of course, students know that “I’m liberal” is likely to get approval from the instructor in the course. But so is “I’m hardworking.”