Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

In Lingro Learning, some of our assignments included looking up different Spanish speaking countries and basically learning more about how they live their day to day lives or how they interact with their families and people in the public. Utilizing Lingro Learning helped to bring clarification to the different ways different cultures live and go about their daily lives. Personally, I try not to place any type of assumptions or conceptions on to cultures I am not apart of because I know how fast things can spread and how gullible people are to information, but I can say I learned a lot of new things that are different from how I live my day to day life and it helped me realize how diverse we are and how different we all live. In an assignment we were to look more into a holiday celebrated in a video presented to us. I never knew Spanish speaking countries celebrated in this way and it gave me more insight into their own distinct way of living and it is so fascinating to see that there is so much diversity throughout the world.

Engaging in Communities

The value of, and importance of engaging in your immediate community and the global community is beneficial because it can and is able to bring change and solutions to minor and major issues and situations happening around the world or in your immediate community. It also is an effective way to bring different cultures and backgrounds together which gives us the opportunity to view how similar but different we all are.

Interpersonal Communication

Some interpersonal oral/audio activities completed this semester consisted of completing conversational videos on different topics and situations with a partner, completing audio assignments in Lingro Learning to help with pronunciation and clarity, discussing topics with our classmates through discussion boards, and talking one on one with our professor in only spanish to practice speaking with no resources to assist us. Doing these activities at the start of this semester was tedious because I did not know how to form sentences and wasn’t as confident in myself. As the semester went on, I was able to better understand how the Spanish language works and started forming sentences and comprehending the Spanish language more easily. I think one thing that helped me the most when talking in Spanish is trying not to stress myself out and thinking more clearly of when and how to use certain words and conjugations. I would always start to freak out because I wasn’t confident in myself, but now, getting more comfortable talking, I feel like with further practice I’ll be successful in communicating. One thing I will do differently moving on to the next spanish course is studying the words more.

Presentational Speaking

We did a presentational video on a place/places we like to go and what we did in those places. I personally don’t like recording myself on camera so I was very uncomfortable being on camera recording myself. What challenged me the most was trying to not read off of any notes and just speaking Spanish with no help or resources. It took me a couple of tries before actually completing this video presentation assignment, but over time I was able to speak on camera without any of my resources or help.

(insert video here)

Presentational Writing

In our conversaciones and proyectos for this semester we were asked to write out scripts for our conversaciones to use to practice for our videos with our partners and/or write paragraphs in Spanish for our proyectos. As we had several conversaciones and proyecto assignments throughout the semester, I became more comfortable at talking in Spanish with my partner and writing in Spanish in my proyectos. Next time, I will do more practice to have more effective results writing in spanish.

Interpretive Listening

In our quizzes and lingro learning assignments, there were an abundance of interpretive listening activities consisting of listening to the conversation and answering the questions related to it. Some things we listened to were conversations between two people, things a person did for fun, and things a person did that they liked or disliked. For me, listening to videos in Spanish is easier for me to comprehend rather than speaking it myself. The only part that was challenging for me is when the speaker is talking fast and I can’t make out some of the words said, but I feel like in every activity I was able to comprehend what was being said faster than the last activity.

Interpretive Reading

Some interpretive communication activities we did in this course consisted of messages and emails in lingro learning as well as personal messages from different individuals living in different spanish speaking countries. Reading Spanish is so much easier than speaking it. But, there are times where I can’t comprehend a certain sentence. What I do when this happens is figure out what the word means and study how it was applied to the sentence so I can comprehend it next time I see, hear, or read it. I think I have grown with each assignment because of how much easier it is for me to read messages and paragraphs in spanish.