Exploring Culture

Learning culture in Spanish was interesting in different ways to help me be better informed about cultures. I believe by learning about cultures in class on top of having assignments on Lingro helped me have a sense of how other cultures are different. One assignment that stood out to me was investigating LBTQUIA in different cultures. This showed me how in other cultures some things are challenged and not allowed, which is similar to the United States. Most things are viewed differently which is similar in most places.

I never had any stereotypes from different cultures with LBGTQUIA’s but I did often wonder before learning about this if there are any differences. I understand overall that a lot of cultures including Spanish speaking countries are similar to our culture.

Engaging in Communities

Without engaging in different communities as far as culture will leave you clueless to what is going on around you. You will never know how different the world is and you miss out on the beautiful things that you would never think that existed. Learning about Spanish cultures allowed me to realize that it’s a lot of thing out there that are cool to try with other cultures like food, art, routines, etc.

Interpersonal Communication

My TalkAbroad conversations were really good conversations that allowed me to better my Spanish speaking skills and adobe able to be familiar with hearing the language.Since learning Spanish I always struggled with making sentences or even understanding what the person was saying and I can say I progressed to be able to understand more than I used to. Talks in class with the language and engaging with talks with peers helped me a lot. What also helped on the TalkAbroad was that the people would help me better understand words and even correct me when I pronounced a word wrong. In class discussions allowed me to make mistakes to correct myself when I had misunderstandings.

Presentational Speaking

Our presentation speaking in class were really good because it allowed my classmates and professor to acknowledge what was being said and also corrected if wrong. It also helped build confidence over time because everyone was nervous and didn’t want to be embarrassed from messing up. We had multiple times to show our speaking skills on projects and even in class.

This presentation is example of one project that we did on our family that allowed us to show our speaking skills from the start of the semester. Overall I did okay but I had a hard time pronouncing some words and also memorizing how to produce my sentences.

Presentational Writing

I completed a various amounts of activities that allowed me to work on my writing in and out of class. Most activities allowed us to show how to form sentences rather than just something easy to pass the time. I was challenged to use my brain to be able to make sense on paper so that my professor or classmates could understand. One activity that allowed me to show my writing skills were this info-graphic that was based on healthy routines and describing when your sick. I still struggle with creating sentences other than speaking but overall I can say I understand how to form sentences to a certain extent with a few placement issues in sentences.

Interpretive Listening

A few activities came from listening to the professor about different cultures. She was so excited showing us the many things she experienced before coming to the United States. One thing that was interesting to me that she showed us how they have cafes and food markets. It was cool because in the food markets were various types of meats that were cheap and other were a fair price to buy. She also explained how people basically visit these markets everyday to prepare food. I never knew how different Spanish cultures were from my own because I think its cool how your more interactive with people as far as buying things compared to here in the United States. Hearing about these experiences she had makes me want to visit different places to see the experience for myself. These activities showed me how big the world is other than the usual things you do in everyday life.

Interpretive Reading

Learning about different readings outside of class were cool to me. I learned about a famous tennis player Rafael Nadal. We often hear about american athletes but it’s rare we hear about athletes from other countries. This guy is a outstanding tennis player and I don’t know much about Tennis but after reading about him this guy was really incredible. It made me realize that many athletes are out there from different cultures that often try to make a name for themselves. These type of readings allowed me to grasp on that its a lot great people out in the world and we don’t hear much about them. I really enjoyed doing these type of activities and I often find myself exploring readings like this more often in my free time.

https://www.forbes.com/profile/rafael-nadal/?sh=a258c8d1bb0f