Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Address the reflection exercises in each of the following sections. For each section, you will need to embed portions of these assignments and activities as artifacts to substantiate your reflection. Then, at the end of each section, include a link to the document or embed it as a PDF. 

Tutorials are available:

• Embedding a PDF
• Embedding Media (Images, Audio)
• Embedding a Video

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.

Engaging in Communities

I personally did not engage in any Spanish communities recently. However I have participated in events in the past that have broaden my view on different Spanish communities and cultures.

As I stated before, I have tried different Spanish foods that were new to me, I attended Spanish birthday party back in high school for a friend, and I ask about certain things in their culture because of my own curiosity. I like to enlighten and educate myself so, my way of engaging in Spanish communities recently has really been to just try new things or learn something new regarding the community.

Interpersonal Communication

This semester was my first time using TalkAbroad to help enhance my Spanish speaking skills. My experience after trying TalkAbroad was fairly good. I thought this activity was new, beneficial, and kind of fun for learning.

In my first TalkAbroad conversation I was instructed to hold a conversation with another Spanish Speaking individual in a Spanish country. The topic of this conversation was to describe our family. I think I did well holding this conversation and I was actually engaged when speaking to this person. even though I struggled a little bit I was still able to comfortably navigate through the conversation and the communication was clear for the most part. My second conversation in TalkAbroad was more challenging than the first. the topic for this conversation was to talk food and health. I prepared for this conversation exactly how I did for the first one but I struggled more during this portion. There were times where I did not understand the vocabulary my partner was using but she still helped me understand to keep the conversation going. That is something that I can appreciate about my TalkAbroad experience.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12XESlpadEa2WF4JCAldEj9kYe6H9CvhP/view?usp=sharing

Presentational Speaking

During my fall semester, there were quite a few a assignments that involved me publicly speaking and presenting to an audience. Some of my oral presentations involved me giving a cooking tutorial in Spanish and describing my family members in Spanish.

I enjoyed doing both of these presentations. They were fairly easy and it helped improved my Spanish vocabulary. One of these assignments helped enlighten me into the fact that a lot of Spanish vocabulary is similar to the English language. I discovered this more as I was doing my cooking tutorial assignment. Something I slightly struggled with while completing this assignment was trying to remember and apply the correct vocabulary and conjugations towards a certain person or thing I was describing. I still struggle with this from time to time but I have gotten better at it.

Presentational Writing

During this semester I worked on a a Spanish infographic as my final project. The information provided in my infographic talked about how to prevent and treat obesity. There were other small writing activities we did during this course such as project comments and reflections. After each project, we were required to answer a list of question in Spanish about our experience of the project while also highlighting what our classmates did well on their project.

Overall, I enjoyed doing these Spanish projects and participating in these activities. One activity that I really liked was when my professor would give us questions and we had to type our answers out in Spanish. Not only was I able to learn new words from this activity but I think it was the most beneficial task I have done in this class. It helped me become more comfortable with writing in the Spanish language.

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 different food items, activities, locations, usage of verbs, how to tell time, and more. I also had to use my interpretive listening skills when I had my TalkAbroad meeting.

This is a link to one of the my TalkAbroad sessions.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12XESlpadEa2WF4JCAldEj9kYe6H9CvhP/view?usp=sharing

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

Most of the reading I did in Spanish took place inside the classroom. There were a few activities where I had to read the descriptions of various individuals from different Spanish speaking countries. The most recent interpretive reading activity I did was going through my classmates infographics.

As far as reading goes, it wasn’t hard for me to read and understand most Spanish vocabulary. There were a few words here and there that I was not familiar with or had a hard time remembering what it means. However, most times I knew and understood what I was reading especially if the vocabulary was accompanied with a visual example.