Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

The practices that I used to gain a better understanding of the cultural perspectives was in lingrolearning’s searching the culture of Spanish speaking countries and our Unit 3 discussion board.

Doing these practices, I was able to better understand some of the cultural differences that are between Spanish speaking countries and the United States. Main differences were in some of the holidays that were celebrated. Some similarities I found however were how they introduced themselves or spoke with other people.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging in the community and culture of the language you are trying to learn is a significant step in order to further your learning. When learning about a language it isn’t just about learning the words, but also the culture and what they believe to get the most meaning out of it. I didn’t get to interact with the community, but I learned how similar the community is to the United States.

Interpersonal Communication

Over the course of the semester, we completed many Flipgrid’s and discussion boards over the various units. The discussion boards we did were the different ways of meeting someone and the difference in culture, the various holidays that are celebrated in Spanish speaking countries, and a famous University that is one of the oldest and best in Spain. The Flipgrid’s were practice for communicating between you and Spanish speakers.

My knowledge on the culture and how to speak in a conversation in Spanish continued to improve with each discussion board and Flipgrid. Learning about how Spanish speakers introduce themselves with a greeting compared to the US isn’t too different so it was easy to grasp that concept. Learning about the different holidays was interesting because some were the same as the United States, but some were very different and for specific cultural reasons or historic reasons. The Flipgrid’s were good practice to learn how to speak and respond in a conversation, it helped knowing some of the basics to start and end a conversation with someone in Spanish. The only thing I would do differently would be to spend more time practicing the actual conversations so that I can be more confident in a social situation.

Presentational Speaking

We didn’t really have any presenting speaking activities, the Flipgrid’s were our activities where we spoke answering and asking questions. We also had interviews with the professor, but I do not have the videos of those.

The interviews were similar to the Flipgrid’s in which we had to ask and answer questions to continue a conversation entirely in Spanish. What challenged me at the start was keeping up with the conversation and knowing how to ask or answer questions. I started to study and practice for these interviews more and was able to put together the structure of how questions are asked and how answers are made. What I exceled at the most was asking the questions, I felt that I understood how to do that very well, the answers to the questions I struggled most on. What I would do differently next time would be to practice more and go over it multiple times until I got it right.

Interpretive Listening

The listening activities we completed were in our canvas and Lingrolearning assignments. We had to listen to the words or sentences being spoken and answer questions related to them and for the lingrolearning it was to learn about the unit topic.

These assignments were not extremely difficult, though I did have some trouble sometimes because the person talks to fast or is not clear enough in the canvas videos. I do think for the Lingrolearning videos they were easy to follow and were interesting to watch to learn. I’ve grown from each of these activities because they have helped me in my later assignments from describing others to who I admire.

Interpretive Reading

The websites that we read in class was the Lingrolearning website, which had most of our work, but we also looked at several other websites for how universities in Spain work.

There wasn’t anything very challenging about these readings, but it was interesting to learn about the cultures and how the universities worked in Spain. What I found most interesting about the readings was that in each Spanish speaking country they had a difference in who they admired or what type of social media they used. My takeaway from the readings was learning more about Spain and other Spanish speaking countries.

https://www.expatica.com/es/education/higher-education/study-in-spain-101452/: 101