Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

What has helped me gain understanding of cultural perspectives is, taking the time to do research on said cultures.

Some practices that helped me gain understanding of cultural perspectives were coming in with an open mind. I feel like this is an crucial step in understanding different cultures because it allows you to receive new information without being judgmental. Another practice that helped me understand other cultures was my curiosity. It lead me to search cultural events on my off time.

These practices helped me understand the Hispanic culture by allowing me to receive new information without being judgmental. Some challenges that these practices revealed to me were giving certain cultures a clean slate. Throughout live you hear some “negative” things about certain cultures and its hard to ignore it if you truly don’t agree with it. The practices caused me to go deeper into the “negative” aspects of cultures and sometimes they’re just lies or exaggerations.

Engaging in Communities

It is important to engage in your community because it is important to have a say in things that will affect you. For example, junior year of Highschool I was apart of a teen leadership committee for my local park. My main duty was to give ideas on how to get more teen active in the community. With me on the committee there was an increase of teens active in the community.

Overall I think me partaking in the Teen Leadership Committee was a good idea because it opened my eyes to problems in the community. It also gave me voice and that my opinion does matter.

Interpersonal Communication

Spanish101 was filled with many fun oral activities. On a daily bases, Mrs. Padilla would insure that we spoke every vocab word on the PowerPoint and made sure we had the pronunciation correct. My favorite oral activity was the unit 5 project. The project for this unit was to video 2-4 places on campus and describe them using gestures and vocab. I really enjoyed this project because she allowed us to be creative. My favorite writing activity in Spanish101 was when we had to describe ourselves.

In Spanish101, we have plenty of opportunities to conversate in Spanish. We would review/complete various activities using the online textbook that involved speaking in Spanish. At the beginning of the semester, I had a hard time recognizing and pronouncing key words in sentences. What helped me overcome this was studying the vocab and engaging in class. Now I can fully understand intermediate sentences and respond accordingly. We didn’t utilize blackboard during the semester.

Presentational Speaking

The only presentational speaking activity that we did was the video showing parts of campus and explain them using vocab and gestures.

For this presentation, I struggled with the tech park of it. It took me a while to find a way to greenscreen parts of campus onto the video and display me overtop of them. I overcame this by watching a couple of Youtube videos. I feel like I exceled in the formatting and accuracy of my video. What I would do differently next time is just record myself next to the building and explain it all in one go.

Interpretive Listening

In the online textbook, interpretive listening activities were a way for students to practice listening and understanding Spanish. For example, one assignment was listen to what Pedro said and summarize what he said and respond. Another example is when we had to model a conversation.

I struggled with recognizing connector words; what helped me overcome this was reviewing the vocab and translating the word using SpanishDict. What I found interesting was how different tones of voice can make it easier or harder to understand Spanish. Overtime I could get the overall message and could piece it together.

Interpretive Reading

Reading Spanish was an everyday thing in Spanish101. We were given multiple handouts where we had to translate small passages. Some other activities were reading sentences and seeing what verb belonged there and some conjugation practice.

Conjugations were a struggle for me in the beginning of the semester but once I was given a handout that had the endings for ar, er, and ir verbs it became easier. Overtime if I didn’t understand a sentence I would use the ending of the verb to try to piece the sentence together.

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