Exploring Culture

Exploring different cultures this semester was very tricky for me. Not because I didn’t understand the material but because it was a-lot of new information to process. I loved learning about the different unique facts about the cultures. For example, when we discussed in class the seasons in Spanish Speaking countries. Their seasons were the opposite of ours here in the United States of America. Example, when we are in winter ( December-March) , they’re in summer and on summer vacation for schools. Or how they finish work early during the day and take naps in between!

-I’ve attached images on different modules from my learning platform LingroLearning.

INVERNO– Winter

VERANO– Summer

PRIMAVERA– Spring

OTOÑO– Fall

Engaging in Communities

Engaging in your immediate community/global community is not only important but it’s incredibly special. Being involved in something more than yourself is a special feeling. It teaches valuable lessons like empathy. Understanding and accepting others. One of my favorite activities was learning about the famous people in other countries. I did a brief research about Shakira, a Columbian singer and song-writer. It was fun and interesting learning about her. Another example is celebrating Spanish Heritage Month at Old Dominion University. My school had dance lessons, readings, food gatherings…etc.

Interpersonal Communication

We had 3 TalkAbroad in this course. TalkAbroad is when you get 30 minutes to talk to a person from any Spanish Speaking country. I got the opportunity to pick where I wanted my person to be from. The first TalkAbroad I did was not my best. I was not following along with my person at all. But by the second TalkAbroad I was able to get the hang of it! I did much better and was able to understand and respond to my person. I chose a girl named Sofía Gaitán from Panama.

Here is REFLECTION QUESTION from my first talk abroad:

“Overall, how did your conversation go?

I was very nervous coming into this. I didn’t really know what to expect but overall i think it went well. I was able to follow what she was saying 80% of the time. My person was very nice and patient with me. I feel like i asked “how do you say..” a-lot but i didn’t want to say the wrong thing. I actually enjoyed this experience a bit. Im going to probably pick her again. Next time i’ll try and talk more because i realized i wasn’t even asking her questions. I didn’t really know if I was suppose too or was she just only talking to me. So I feel that next time ill be a bit more prepared. “

Here is an example of helpful catchy audio:

Presentational Speaking

 Using LingroLearing, I had to upload several presentational projects. Here is an examples:

MODULE 6

a three-minute video describing your family with at least five family members, including yourself. It can be an audio recording with image(s) of the family members or a video where you talk as you show the visual(s).

-name

-his or her relationship to you

-physical traits

-personality

-some activities or things s/he does, such as juega al tenis or sonríe mucho

-a photo for visual support

This modules I really enjoyed putting together. For this module I talked about my sister, bffs and puppy. I love them all very much so it was fun and easy talking about it! The vocabulary for the module was not difficult. I definitely could have worked on sounding my vowels better, but overall I was able to articulate most of the words.

Presentational Writing

The writing concept of presenting was very difficult for me at first but towards the end of the semester I began to get the hang of it. It was difficult for me to write out the words in correct terms and spelling. Knowing where to put punctuations and remembering certain sounds to certain letter. But once I began studying more, it became easier!

Here is an example of a writing presentation:

Interpretive Listening

Part of our homework we had to listen to audios. A lot of them was difficult for me to follow through. I would have to play the audio multiple time to catch on but eventually I did. I would have to listen and answer questions using the audio.

Another example, we had to listen to an audio and respond back recording ourselves. This wasn’t too difficult, I was able to follow along and respond back accurately.

A cool video my teacher showed during class, using today’s culture in hip-hop to teach kids the spanish alphabet :

Interpretive Reading

During class we always read a passage, whether that being a long description/introduction to a lesson or a couple sentences simply explaining a question. My professor would give us a couple minutes to read through the passage first on our own. Then go over as a class any word/phrase we didn’t recognize or understand. That helped a-lot especially for the challenging words that weren’t on the vocabulary.

I also had many reading assignments on our homework platform LingroLearning. Most assignments would have a paragraph and missing words that I had to fill in with the correct words. It wasn’t the easiest but using context clues I was able to figure it out. Also, when I have an assignment, LingroLearning provides examples to help understand the assignment criteria.

Example of a nomination letter as a reference to creating my own: