Exploring Culture
A few things that helped me gain a better understanding of the Hispanic culture is by associating and surrounding myself with the people in it.
I have always been open to trying new things whether it be new food, attending events that involve the hispanic culture or just asking simple questions about the culture. I have friends back from high school that enlightened me on their culture and family and how it makes them so unique. They taught me a lot such as certain terms they say or even food that they make like pupusas. Being able to surround myself with multiple hispanic cultures was a fun and educational experience for me.
Interpersonal Communication
One of the many assignments in my Spanish class that required oral practice were my projects or Proyecto’s. These assignments usually required us to describe something or someone while involving the usage of Spanish verbs that we learned over the course of the semester. I also used oral communication in my Spanish interviews with my professor.
Video: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AbyG2epu1y6Yui6ILzHGBfRULNCnEw64?usp=sharing
There were a few unplanned events where I had to use my Spanish knowledge to verbally communicate with my teacher. For example, there were times in class when my professor would go around the class and have us describe ourselves in 3 verbs in Spanish. She would do this often but it was always on the spot and she did this to test us to see how well we could use the Spanish language. Doing this wasn’t as difficult as it was in the beginning because after a while it started to get repetitive which made it easier for me to remember certain words and conjugations. I definitely learned a lot in this class but I still think there is more to work on. I know I could’ve done better in certain areas of this class but I felt successful for the most part while attending this course.
Presentational Speaking
In this class we did a lot of writing and typing. We were taught to form sentences in Spanish using the correct conjugations according to gender and many other factors.
I used lingrolearning.com a lot in this class as a source for my homework but also to help me understand how to write in Spanish. There were a lot of hard assignments on this website but the practice video helped out a lot. These videos and examples helped me prepare for my in person writing test. I think what made it easy for me to learn how to write in Spanish was knowing how and when to conjugate verbs. For example, contento means happy in spanish but, if you are using it in a masculine context then it remains as “contento” but if you are using it in a feminine context then it should be switched to contenta. Learning this rule is very important and was one of the first steps to making my writing experience better.
Interpretive Listening
In this course we used a lot of videos as resources to help us better understand the language. The videos varied from teaching us how to describe weather, activities, locations, usage of verbs, how to tell time, and more.
This is a link to one of the videos we used to help us learn about time in the Spanish language.
These videos were definitely beneficial in a way. I would say they helped me more with my verbal communication more so than written communication. One noticeable struggle I dealt with while watching these videos was trying to understand the speech sometimes. Because this is a different language, sometimes there were words or phrases that I had to play back a couple times because I did not know what was being said. This can make assignments challenging because as a student, I can only apply what I am being taught so, when something that is being taught comes off as confusing it makes it more difficult for me to learn it and then use it.
Interpretive Reading
We had to read a lot in this class to learn the language at a high level. In lingrolearning.com there were some assignments that involved people with descriptions of themselves and I was required to read them. The assignment then tested my reading skills and I had to match the descriptions with the right person.
Overall, I think this is a good way to learn the language and test your full understanding of it. This assignment specifically evaluates your ability to interpret certain characteristics of a person but also makes sure you know how to describe things or people. I struggled a little bit with these types of assignments but they are not hard. I knew I just needed to pay attention to the details of the words used. That’s what helped me understand and read Spanish better.