Exploring Culture

Overall, this book helped me with a lot of assignments. The book helped me better understand values and attitudes in the Hispanic culture because it had different activities to show and tell how things work in Spanish. One example was when we started to work on the families in Spanish. I learned how to pronounce the different types of family members, their relations, and how to use them in sentences.

Engaging in Communities

I used to watch Spanish movies with my Hispanic friend all the time in my freshmen year of high school. I can recall when we had watched this Spanish movie called ‘CoCo’ which was about a young boy named Miguel who needs to find out why his family is banned from music. This movie showed me a different light of the Spanish community. I learned about the Mexico tradition of Dia de Los Muertos, which is the day of the dead, the connection of family is strong and eternal, and we need to love and support our family members in whatever they do. I definitely learned some more Spanish phrases and more from the movie. I would recommend this movie to people who want to learn a few things about the Spanish culture.

Interpersonal Communication

During the semester, the teacher would assign discussion boards that we would have to do before the end of day. These would include introducing ourselves to the class or having an student-to-student conversation. Sometimes, we would have to reply to one of our classmates posts. I like the discussion boards better it was nice to see what would my classmates write about or see if we have something in common. It can be pretty interesting at times.

Presentational Speaking

During class, we would have assignments where we would role-play a conversation with our peers. Sometimes, it would be scheduled or random. I definitely found these to be more stressful on me because I tend to get very anxious and that’s where I make all the mistakes. But I overcame my fear of presenting was by practicing in front of my mirror, positive thoughts, and deep breaths. With this particular presentation, I did well at memorizing my lines and practicing with my partner. One thing I would do differently was just being more relaxed and trusting myself.

Presentational Writing

We had 2 composition assignments during the course where we wrote about our families, our school, or ourselves. For these compositions, we first had to brainstorm our ideas, make a rough draft, then do the final copy with the corrections from the teacher. I like doing the compositions more because I like writing more and it came more easier to me. I could also see where I went wrong like the accent marks, spelling, verbs, and etc.

Interpretive Listening

During this course, most of the interpretive listening was done on VHL website. There were a lot interpretive listening activities that went with each module the teacher assigned.

I listened to many different listening activities. Each of them came with either short videos or someone talking to you with some questions coming after each activity. I would say some activities were harder because learning a new language can be hard but VHL explained everything thoroughly and I then made sure I learned from my mistakes by going back and checking where I went wrong and listening more carefully. What I found interesting was how different hearing Spanish people speak and how you have to have the right pronunciation.

Interpretive Reading

During this course, we also had a lot of interpretive readings in VHL and also some in class where the teacher would pick out some students to reading a passage or just popcorn reading. I would honestly get scared if I was called on because I would always stutter, saying the words wrong, or it would just be my nerves. I overcame this by taking my time, studying the material, and doing my homework so I can be more prepared in class if I was being called on. Below is one the activity that required interpretive reading.