Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Throughout the course, we were given a few assignments that required us to research further into different cultures involved in Spanish-speaking countries. We were also able to discuss some of these findings with our classmates as well.

These assignments helped me a lot in discovering the many different cultural nuances of these very unique places. I really enjoyed being able to discuss these with my classmates as well because it helped to know that I was not alone in being genuinely surprised by some of these cultural differences we were reading and learning about. It also helped me a little bit with my own self-identity as I am Hispanic but don’t spend much time with that part of my family so I had felt a bit distanced from that part of myself.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging your immediate community helps ensure that you have a good understanding of what is going on in your immediate neighborhood. You also want to engage in the global community as well because it can be easy to lose perspective if you don’t.

Interpersonal Communication

The most interpersonal exchanges I had in Spanish either happened at home or at my work in the hospital. At home, these conversations involved myself, my partner, and/or my mother. This is interesting because they are very proficient at the language and I am very much not. At the beginning, it was mostly them speaking Spanish with me responding in Spanglish. Now, I am proficient enough to continuously sass them in Spanish. I am going to continue to try to hold longer and longer conversations in Spanish with the both of them, maybe even simultaneously.

This also applies to when I would talk to patients at the hospital. In addition, I had to worry about different dialects when I would speak to patients at work so more often than not, I would use a translating service. In both instances, I was great at understanding what people were saying, for the most part. But communicating what I wanted to them was a little bit more difficult. From here on out though, I’ve told myself that I won’t shy away from trying to communicate more with my patients because it is a great way for me to practice, and helps establish a good rapport with my patients.

Presentational Speaking

This semester, our presentational speaking activities comprised of our Flipgrid posts and recordings we had to make of ourselves for grades.

The recording I wanted to include was from the beginning of the semester, where we had to record ourselves pronouncing different words. There were a couple of words that were a little challenging to pronounce correctly but overall, I feel that I excelled at it.

Presentational Writing

Presentational communication that I made this semester is comprised of the whiteboard updates I would provide in my Spanish speaking patients’ rooms. Unfortunately, that is not something I can provide an example of but I would update these with my name, their plan of the day, and when they were able to get their pain medication if they were conscious and able to read the board.

I have grown since prior to this class in relation to writing on my Spanish-speaking patients’ update boards. Before I would only write my name out but now I am able to give them much more ease about their stay. I can continue to work on my medical Spanish to improve this even further.

Interpretive Listening

We had many activities for class that involved us listening and interpreting what it is we were listening to. The majority of them being conversations we would listen to and then either fill in the blank for certain words, or answer comprehension questions specific to the listening passage. I also would listen to my family speak Spanish and interpret to answer adequately.

I had a hard time with new words that I had not encountered before when I would speak with my family. A lot of the time, I was able to use context clues and figure out from there what it was they were trying to communicate. Our listening passages for class were fairly straight-forward and the majority of the time, you had a clue into what the conversation was going to be about and that made interpretive listening to them much easier.

Interpretive Reading

There were many passages within our coursework that required us to read and then answer comprehensive questions about them. One in particular that stands out was answering questions about some student’s schedules for the week.

The calendar assignment was actually pretty difficult for me initially just because it was easy to get lost in. It was a great way to help us understand different ways to refer to the time of day and just days of the week in general, as well.