Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Professor Donoghue supplied discussion boards regarding various Hispanic cultures throughout our semester. We were asked to reflect about their culture and provide feedback. For example, she showed us a video of all the numerous festivals celebrated by Spanish communities. They had a wide range of holidays that we, as Americans, had never heard of. This helped us to see their culture’s point of view. Furthermore, we had a discussion board that expressed a type of greeting they use in Spanish cultures. In their culture, they use the two-cheek kiss as a form of greeting. In America, we often do not use this form of greeting.

After reflecting on the materials provided by our professor. I gained a deeper knowledge of Hispanic celebrations and how they greet one another. Along with more knowledge of their culture.  We did additional research on our discussions  which provided me a greater perspective on them. Learning about their cultural holidays, I discovered that they had more fun holidays than we do. For example, in our discussion board, I mentioned the festival “Tomatina Festival,” where people assemble and run around in tomatoes. They do this for no reason other than to have fun! We also compared their university to ours, which demonstrated how different and similar our institutions are.

Engaging in Communities

It is essential to engage in communities in order to be aware of what is going on in your community.  Another advantage of engaging in communities is that people may help one another and, if necessary, reduce the likelihood of language barriers. For example, the significance and usefulness of learning Spanish will improve my future profession. While working in my field, my purpose is to assist Hispanic people who do not understand English. I realize how challenging it may be to have a language barrier between two cultures, therefore studying Spanish is critical. In the future, I would like to participate in Hispanic culture by attending the annual “La Tomatina Festival.”

Interpersonal Communication

Throughout the semester, our professor provided discussion boards for each module, allowing us to discuss what we were learning in that module while also communicating with our classmates. She gave us factual information about Hispanic cultures through these discussion boards. We had the opportunity to learn about their culture and compare it to our own. Lingro, the website we used during our course, offers large reading paragraphs in Spanish to help us learn how to read in Spanish. One of our verbal homework was to say the alphabet in Spanish using words provided by her. This allowed us to practice speaking Spanish properly.

For our interpersonal communication, I did not have any difficulty throughout our course. However, I’ve grown as a result of a better comprehension of writing and reading activities as a result of our discussion boards and Lingro. I discovered that I need to slow down when reading Spanish because I have a tendency to ignore and mistranslate terms. What I would do differently is concentrate more on reading and writing because I still struggle with spelling and translating words in lengthy paragraphs.

Presentational Speaking

During this semester, I have not done any outside presentational speaking activities, except for Spanish. For Spanish class, we created our own videos to share to other classmates. This presentational activities included us recording ourselves speaking Spanish along with communicating with our classmates. Our Professor asked us open-ended questions that we were to respond to on video.

The difficulty I encountered during these presentational speaking tasks was that I am a shy person, therefore I was nervous at the start of this course because we had to film ourselves speaking Spanish. I already struggled with English, so learning Spanish was a challenge. By the end of this class though, I felt more at ease recording myself speaking Spanish. I’m motivated to be more confident the next time I record myself speaking Spanish. I wouldn’t say I excelled in Spanish during this course, but I’m still learning it and trying to improve my speaking skills as much as I can.

Presentational Writing

When it comes to presentational writing, our class mostly wrote in Spanish for quizzes, exams, and the Lingro website. Lingro, on the other hand, offered us paragraphs and articles to read, while our Professor presented us with videos to watch.

During these writing activities, I had difficulty writing because I was struggling with how to correctly spell some of the words in Spanish because they were very different than English words. Throughout the end of the course, it was easier to write in Spanish because I became used to it and practiced. I overcame this obstacle by studying and correcting my mistakes. I don’t think I excelled much because I still struggling with writing. Next time, I will be better at spelling out Spanish words correctly without messing up.

Interpretive Listening

Throughout the semester, Professor Donoghue gave listening activities that assisted students in learning and pronouncing specific words in Spanish that we were studying at the time. Throughout our quizzes and exam, she gave listening tasks that enhanced our course knowledge. We were also given a website with listening assignments and examples to aid us with this course. Lingro is the name of this website. 

https://lingrolearning.com/ This website served as an additional resource for our Spanish class. This website offered videos, writing, and listening activities to assist students in learning Spanish. Personally, I enjoyed this website and gained a lot of new knowledge. To practice and learn, this website provided clear pronunciations of words. However, listening to certain videos when they spoke quickly was difficult. I overcame this challenge by watching the video several times and paying great attention while they spoke. This listening experience was good for me. I can concentrate better when trying to listen. Also, when someone speaks quickly and with an accent, I have learned to focus more and listen better.

Interpretive Reading

Lingro’s website presented us several paragraphs to read and comprehend. They provided a brief introduction paragraph for us to read in “preparar” before beginning our module assignment. This introduction provided a description of the portion we were about to explore. In addition, in certain courses, we were given a letter in Spanish to read and translate that we would need to use in future tasks.

I struggled to translate specific words throughout the introduction and written letter provided by Lingro on an assignment. This was due to the fact that we had not yet learned some words from the letter and paragraph. As a result, I could only grasp parts of sentences. In order to understand the paragraph/letter, I looked up the appropriate word in English. Each assignment has helped me progress by allowing me to translate vocabulary that I previously did not know. After a while, I was relieved to discover that I was comprehending longer paragraphs.