Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Our Cultura exercises in the textbook helped me to understand new cultures, such as the information and videos given about Madrid in Chapter 15.

This is an example of a few questions that were offered on my Flash Cultura homework about Madrid for Chapter 15. While they are very simple, they offer quite a bit of insight in the lives of Spaniards. Madrid, according to these questions, is a very busy, crowded city with lots of traffic and stress, but also many beautiful museums, plazas, and cafes. This helps us to view the similarities between Madrid and large American cities, as well as their differences.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging in your local community and global community in this day and age has never been easier. Nowadays, connecting to others from across the globe is as simple as hopping on social media and searching under different hashtags. This is so important, because it allows us to see new perspectives and lifestyles that we would otherwise have no access to, and helps us realize that we are not alone in this world, but instead we share it with so many different walks of life.

While connecting can be easy, actually participating, however, has been challenging this year. I have not had the opportunity to truly engage with those outside of my immediate family and friend group due to the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic. However, once this virus subsides, I will be happily engaging with those from all over in order to indulge in their cultures and learn about their worldview.

Interpersonal Communication

TalkAbroad has been an interesting and helpful tool to me this semester. I was paired with two different women, both from Guatemala, to discuss our living areas as well as our careers. Furthermore, in class we were assigned discussion board posts to engage with our classmates and learn more about their likes and dislikes, as well as being paired in breakout rooms on Zoom to work collaboratively on class assignments and discussions. Finally, since I live at home with my family, and my sister and mother are both in school taking Spanish courses, we are able to speak a little bit of the language at home.

Discussion board posts and breakout rooms started out tedious, but soon became enjoyable, as I was able to learn more about my classmates in a different language. This was a bit challenging, as sometimes one or both of us could forget words and become tripped up, so our communication skills were not at their highest caliber. However, as the semester progressed, we became much better at getting out the necessary words to get our points across. Speaking with my mother and sister in Spanish in the household has definitely aided me as a student, since they are in lower levels of Spanish than I am, so I was able to help them and guide them through what they were attempting to say, and laughing with them along the way.

Out of all of these, TalkAbroad was definitely my favorite means of interpersonal communication. Not only was I forced to think in Spanish, rather than simply just speak, but I also was given the opportunity to learn so much than I expected about Guatemalan culture and society. The two women I met with were so understanding when I tripped up on my words and taught me new words along the way, which helped me grow as a student in that I was learning so much about culture, grammar, and vocabulary all at the same time. I would recommend this experience to Spanish students of all ages!

Presentational Speaking

In English, give a brief 2-3-line description of any presentational speaking activities you completed this semester inside or outside of class for or related to your Spanish learning. Include a recording of one of these speaking activities. (See Modes of Communication link for description and examples). 

Since this semester was fully online, presentations were very difficult to pull off; thus, the only real presentational speaking I did was in my TalkAbroad. I would consider this to be presentational because I had to prepare what I was going to tell my partner beforehand about myself, my lifestyle, and my goals for the future, and then present it in a more conversational way.

Since I no longer have access to the audio from my TalkAbroads, I have attached a short transcription of my conversation with my second partner. In this, my partner, S, and I, A, discuss my partner’s city and whether or not I prefer the city or the countryside; to which I responded that I like small cities, like near my old house. This type of presentation, in my opinion, is so much better than a traditional type presentational speaking because of its way to make you think on the fly based on the direction of the conversation. Not only did I have to pay close attention to what my partner was saying, but I also had to quickly remember my own speaking points to present while responding to her all at the same time. This helped me grow so much as a speaker because of the way that I had to think quickly in the language that I am learning.

Presentational Writing

This semester, our presentational writing was done in the way of two compositions. The first one was about a letter that we would send to a newspaper editor about the environment, saying what we think the most pressing issue is involving the environment and how it can be fixed. The second was about our goals for the future and how we plan on accomplishing them.

Final-Draft-Comp-1.docx

Attached is a PDF file of my first composition for this semester. I was graded a 93 on the rough draft, and a 99 on the final draft, once my mistakes were corrected. Most of my mistakes were either forgetting to match my adjectives to the number and gender of the noun, or conjugating incorrectly. Having a rough draft submission in class and then a final draft submission is so helpful in my opinion, because it forces us to realize and fix our mistakes directly, rather than shove in an entire composition expecting it to be perfect the first time. I was able to learn as I went and remind myself to read over my work before turning it in to be sure that I am as correct as I am capable of being in that moment.

Interpretive Listening

A majority of the listening activities done this semester were incorporated through our homework. Sometimes we would be assigned a listening portion that either went along with our grammar lesson or the culture that we were learning about, and we had to answer questions that were normally in a true-or-false form.

https://m3a.vhlcentral.com/sections/961670/activities/139871

This is an example of a video I watched for homework about Mexico City. I had to listen closely to what was being said and watch closely to see the sights included in the video. Then, I answered true or false questions in the same format as the ones previously shown in the Exploring Culture section. Listening has always been one of my weaker spots when it came to learning Spanish, because the speakers always spoke so quickly. However, after completing more and more listening activities, the talking speed of the speaker hardly affects me anymore, and it is all thanks to these homework assignments.

Interpretive Reading

Again, most of the interpretive reading assigned to us this semester was out of the textbook. We read short, interesting stories such as “La foto” in Chapter 13.

Attached is a screenshot of the story “La foto” from Chapter 13 in our textbook. This story is about a man whose wife is dead, but before she died he took a photo of her in order to remember her beautiful face. A few days after her death, the photo of her was soiled by a blossoming sunflower on the photo, reminiscent of the man’s wife. Reading has always been a stronger spot of mine in Spanish because stories in Spanish are so much more interesting, because I have to really work my brain to discover what the story says. Thus, I did not really struggle with the reading portions of our assignments this year, but I thoroughly enjoyed them.