Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

This semester, I have felt that the Flash Cultura and Competencia Cultural assignments have really helped me to gain an understanding of cultural perspectives. The videos covered information about Spanish food and culture as well as historic landmarks. It was really interesting to learn about the different customs and values that the Hispanic culture has. For example, outdoor markets are a very common thing in many Spanish speaking countries. In the video below, I was able to learn more about some of the common Spanish meals and how they are made. I learned how Mexican food in a lot of places around America is not always made how the classic dishes should be made. For instance, traditional tacos usually have a soft tortilla while many tacos in America are made with hard shells. I do not feel I necessarily had to work through any stereotypes, but it was interesting to understand that the American view on many Hispanic dishes is not very accurate.

https://m3a.vhlcentral.com/sections/1072465/activities/126357

Engaging in Communities

I feel as though this semester I’ve not only gotten to engage in an immediate community with my class, but also someone is a part of another community. With my class being only six people, I got a chance to get to know each of them and have a much better sense of comfort when it came to practicing our Spanish together. However, speaking to Stephany, my TalkAbroad partner, taught me a lot about speaking to someone from another culture. It was interesting to see how much we had in common with one another but also learn about some of the different values that we have.

Interpersonal Communication

One assignment we had to do this semester was a Talk Abroad conversation. In this assignment, we spoke with someone from a Spanish speaking country for 15 minutes on either places/clothing or food/daily routines. I chose to talk about daily routines and food with my partner Stephany, who was from Mérida, Yucatán, México.

I was extremely surprised at how much Spanish I knew. I had questions written down to help me have discussion topics but otherwise felt the conversation flowed quite smoothly. I can tell just from my last Spanish class how much my speaking and listening skills have advanced. Last semester I really struggled with verbs and tenses and felt like I was able to explain things to Stephany with much better verb usage. The most difficult thing for me to overcome was just knowing vocab and trying to figure out how to put into words what I wanted to say, but I think that’s something that will come with time and practice. I learned that Spanish is easier to understand than speak for me and I need to work on being able to say the thoughts I want to express.

Another form of Interpersonal Communication I had in this class was the discussion boards. In the discussion board shown below, we were asked to answer a series of questions about our days. These were questions ranging from what time we got up to what we did the day before.

I feel like this was a really great lesson as it improved my Spanish speaking ability in learning how to express day-to-day things. I think the most difficult task for me was just grasping the past tense for verbs at first. However, with practice, I felt like it got a lot easier. I still find myself hesitating when conjugating these verbs when speaking so I think that’s still an area I could practice. This discussion board also had a few stem-changing verbs which are something I have really struggled with remembering this semester. So, any activities requiring me to practice were beneficial to me.

Presentational Speaking

Oftentimes in class this semester, we would be put into break-out rooms with a partner on Zoom and be required to answer questions or formulate writing to present. For this assignment, I was put into a breakout room with a classmate and asked to answer some questions based on a scenario where we are making a meal for our significant other. We had to describe the meal and the things that were in it in order to improve our knowledge of the vocabulary of food. Afterward, we read these out loud to the entire class.

I felt like I excelled at remembering a lot of the vocab for this chapter. Many of the words weren’t too hard to memorize and it was fun to have an assignment where we got to have the freedom to write about whatever food we wanted. I chose to prepare tacos for my husband and I described in Spanish how I make them. The only thing I would have done differently next time would be to write a little more to read out loud. I feel like I sometimes get nervous reading out loud in class because my pronunciation might not be the best but I’ve realized as the semester has come to an end that it’s a learning experience that will only help me get better.

Presentational Writing

One assignment we did involving presentation writing were our Composición writing assignments. We did a total of two this semester and below I attached the second one. The prompt was to write our daily routine if we lived in an interesting place. Since it had to be somewhere different than where we normally live, I chose to live on a planet called Naboo from Star Wars and write from the queens perspective.

This assignment was a challenging but interesting experience. The main focus were reflexive verbs so that we could practice describing daily routines. The most difficult part about this assignment was writing two verbs in one sentence and knowing when I can write, for example, things like “cepillarme’ or “me cepillo”. I had originally thought I could write “cepillarme’ in this paper but learned that even though my sentence had two different verbs, they were still two different types of actions. I learned a lot from this paper about reflexive verbs and how to properly use them which became extremely helpful when I did my Talk Abroad conversation on daily routines.

Composicion-Star-Wars-1

Interpretive Listening

Throughout the semester, we had homework assignments through VHL. Oftentimes we would have assignments where we were required to listen to someone speaking in Spanish and answer a series of questions about what was said. In this assignment, I had to decide if each sentence was logical or illogical.

The most challenging part of this assignment was recognizing some vocab and verbs. I would often pause the recording and rewind before I could figure out what was said. Any words I did not understand I would have to look up online or in the book. However, unless I slightly recognized the word, I would not know how to spell it. So trying to look it up was sometimes useless. What I would then do then was use context clues from the rest of the sentence to try and decipher it. With that being said, I still feel like I can understand so much more than I could at the start of the semester. This was an assignment that really required me to listen well and decide if what was being said actually made sense in comparison to usually listening to Spanish and just believing that it’s all correct.

Interpretive Reading

Almost every week we were required to complete a Lectura assignment. We would read a pamphlet, story, or article and answer a series of questions about what we read. In this assignment, I read a story about the morning routine of a father and his kids. They get ready for school only to realize at the end of the story that it is Saturday.

Lectura assignments are something I feel quite familiar with as I did them a lot in my last class too. However, I have noticed a big improvement in my ability to read them and almost fully grasp what is being said without having to look up too many words. This was a story I particularly enjoyed reading and felt like I could understand well. This was another assignment that helped with my understanding of reflexive verbs and daily routines which have been one of my favorite things to learn about this semester. My takeaway from this reading was that general vocab and verbs play a big role in daily routines and if I knew what the verb meant, it was really easy to follow the story and the actions the family did that morning.