Language Acquisition As An Investment?

While lying down on my chair, which is not a normal chair to rest, but to think and work very hard; it is where I basically execute most of my thought processes regarding my English composition course.  How can I improve my second language skills?  By striving hard, by reading constantly and by pushing myself to develop a better understanding of the language environment I interact with.  I am now working on my annotated bibliography, which is due by the end of the course, but I need to work on it ahead of time, since I will need the whole month of April to study for my comp examination.  As one of my classmates puts it, “It is a nightmare.”  Very frightening! This is probably the scariest challenge I have ever experienced in my life.  Anyway, while searching Dominguez database, I found an interesting article for my annotated bibliography; titled, “Language as an investment, Capital and Economics: Spanish-speaking English Learners’ Language Use and Attitudes.”  I see power in this title; also, truth and reality.  Investing in the acquisition of a second language is a sort of transforming our social identity.  This is true for immigrants, not only for Spanish-speaking groups, but for all immigrants.  It is a way to develop a second social identity that will make them becoming individuals with complex identity.  Learners with complex identities claimed the English-speaking identity, the Spanish-speaking identity, and the bilingual identity.  The author of the article suggests that language builds social capital, which in turn, helps second language learners to overcome obstacles and to endure hardships and to earn higher wages.  Latino immigrants who strive hard to learn the language; develop abilities that will transform them in active and efficient participants of the diverse society and the social environments they interact with.