Exploring Culture

Being the Puerto Rican that I am, practicing Spanish culture is normal to me. Every year though I learn something about the Spanish culture whether that’s through a holiday or a person who wasn’t born on the island of Puerto Rico.

Talking to someone that has a Spanish background and a better understanding of the culture has become one of my favorite things ever. I’m able to learn Spanish culture outside just puertoricans. For example, I have relatives from Spain and Cuba. Spaniards and Cubans have a different way of practicing our culture but it all comes back down to the roots of the language which I love. One challenge that did come up for me was wanting to celebrate like Cubans and Spaniards but not being around them. I wanted to celebrate it the right way rather than the way I assume they do.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging in your community is beyond important. We the people are the only thing that will make this a better place and we need to work together to accomplish the perfect community.

I’ve done a bunch of different engagements with my immediate and global community. I tend to volunteer a lot in cleaning beaches and parks to make the environment clean. I also help the homeless by providing hot meals and warm clothes. I also take part in donating to churches so they can provide food drives for people who are dying of hunger.

Interpersonal Communication

Reading the book that was assigned for my Spanish 202 class has taught me a lot on how to speak and pronounce words I struggled with in the past. It also taught me how to put certain sentences and phrases that help express how you’re feeling or what you’re trying to describe. Another thing that really helped with my Spanish learning was the interviews that my teacher assigned me. It put pressure on me to speak my very best Spanish and study more to perfect my accent. It helped me the most and in result, made me feel more confident in my Spanish speaking.

Every homework assignment and pop quiz tested my knowledge and understanding of Spanish and it was just the push I needed. Discussion boards helped me branch out my communication skills to the teacher and myself. I wouldn’t say anything was difficult other than trying to get better at my accent. My accent was my biggest insecurity and the breakout rooms and the interviews helped me get better at it. I would say I excelled in helping others. Every student asked for my help at least once and not only was it helping them, it was helping me as well. It tested my knowledge of Spanish which made stronger in my ability to expand in the language.

Presentational Speaking

One assignment my teacher assigned this semester was an interview with her. This interview tested our knowledge in speaking and vocabulary.

The interview didn’t necessarily challenge me other than to study the vocabulary for that unit. I personally didn’t struggle with anything in this course. It more so just strengthened my Spanish knowledge. I’m constantly speaking Spanish around my family so interviewing my teacher was no different other than of course it being for a grade. It is awarding to know that I’m doing a good job with my Spanish speaking with the grades I receive for interviews and discussion boards.

Presentational Writing

My class didn’t really get assigned presentational writings other than discussion boards and composition writings. These were to strengthen our understanding of vocabulary.

Discussion boards helped me grow in answering questions about ourselves, our family, school, and any activities we’re interested in. Composition writings helped me with accent placements. My biggest obstacle with writing in Spanish was placing accents in the right spots. These certain activities became easier the more they were more assigned which is what I needed.

Interpretive Listening

Every exam that we had for the semester had a portion where we had to listen and answering true or false questions. We also had Cultura videos that spoke Spanish to understanding the way other Spanish countries live.

There were a few questions following the cultura videos that made me question if I understood something correctly. This was definitely challenging to me because I would have to go back and listen to the video again in order to make sure I heard what they were saying. I overcame this difficulty by turning on the subtitles to the videos or using context clues to get a better understanding of what was said. They were very interesting videos and I was able to learn a lot about different cultures such as Argentina and Spaniards. My Spanish knowledge grew from these two activities mainly in getting use to other Spanish accents and understanding what they were saying.

Interpretive Reading

There was a book assigned to this class which you had to read in order to understand the homework that was given. We also had powerpoints that we had to read for our next class.

I personally didn’t struggle with anything in the book nor the powerpoints. Everything was explained thoroughly and made sense to me. I did learn how to spell words I didn’t know how to spell before. I also learn where to place accent marks on those words which is very important in the Spanish language.