Exploring Culture

Adobo is a seasoning used across Spanish cultures. I come from a family that never used much seasoning. When I met my wife, who’s originally from Puerto Rico, she would put Adobo on every dish. She was always heavy-handed when seasoning our food. After a while, I became use to what I once considered over-seasoned food. Now I can’t eat without having some spice in my food.

I always saw Adobo in the tiny Spanish section in the grocery store, but never realized the cultural identity Adobo has. I learned about Adobo’s history, dating back to the Spanish colonists using spices to preserve fish for the voyage to the Americas. The spice spread across Latin Americas and the Caribbean and became imbedded into the culture. The Goya Adobo we enjoy today is a combination of these recipes from various cultures across Latin America.

Engaging in Communities

Community is what makes a place feel like home. Social interactions with your neighbors in your community strengthens the bond between the people and allows people to come together for one unified goal. When I lived in New Orleans, I always loved going to the Mardi Gras festival and seeing the community come together and celebrate. This reminds me of the 12 Fiestas in Spin every year where the people come together to celebrate for religious reasons or to just unwind and party.

Interpersonal Communication

Throughout the semester, my classmates and I have been interacting through discussion boards focused on learning about Spanish culture. For example, we discussed the 12 festivals held in Spain every year, and compared them to our own cultural traditions. We also used Flip Grid to verbally communicate and observed our classmates speaking Spanish. We asked each other questions in Spanish and learned personal details about each other. My Classmates were creative and showed excellent pronunciation of sentences. These applications helped us identify any issues we had and gave us a goal to practice and improve before our next interaction.

Presentational Speaking

In Flip Grid Module 5, we had to present our favorite person to the class. We had to present the video entirely in Spanish, and I chose my father for my presentation. Writing about my favorite person was more straightforward than the other prompts as I had creative freedom to say exactly what I wanted. The First Flipgrid assignment in Spanish was the most difficult. I never tried speaking complete Spanish sentences before and I didn’t how my pronunciation would sound. I broke words down into syllables which helped with words that have multiple sounds in a single word, such as compasiva as (com-pass- si-va) and ejercicio (e-her-si-sio). Once I wrote down and practiced pronouncing my response, i became more confident in my speaking.

Presentational Writing

Writing and reading in Spanish is my strength when compared to my listening and speaking ability. I am able to take my time to ensure the correctness of my writing. Throughout the semester we slowly wrote more sentences in Spanish. When we wrote our response to a subject, we wrote two of the sentences in Spanish (example 1). This was preparing us for our final exams where we have to write completely in Spanish.

Every module has an activity on writing. They are usually fill in the blanks with the proper conjugation of a verb (example 2). Conjugation was difficult at first, until I noticed that all verbs follow a pattern. The conjugation is based of who is preforming the action and the formality of the conversation. Once I learned the vocabulary to identify the subject, conjugation became easier.

Interpretive Listening

Every unit we had listening prompts, where we had to answer question based off of what was said (example 1). This was a challenging due to words being pronounced differently when they are spoken. This is apparent in words with the letter “j” or “x” which both sound like the English “h” (example 2). This can make transcribing what is said difficult.

Having someone repeat what they said can clear up any confusion. An example of this would be our Flip Grid assignments, where we filled in the blank to what was said by our instructor (example 3). We would have to answer her questions and formulate a question for her based on her response. I would rewatch the video several times to fully comprehend what she was asking. The challenge was taking what she had answered and asking the question that fits her response. By the second conversation, I was confident in my vocabulary and comprehension ability and only needed to listen to the recording twice to comprehend fully.

lingro learning Spanish 101f

Flipgrid Conversation 2

Interpretive Reading

When reading about different cultures, I found my vocabulary comprehension needed to be improved. I could easily understand (example 1) from Unidad 1 because of the similarities to English. “Telefono”,”Mensajes de texto”, and “importantes” are all similar to their English counterparts. In Unidad 2, the vocabulary difficulty increased, and I needed help understanding the context of the sentences. I broke each sentence down by what I knew and used a dictionary to piece together the unfamiliar words. After doing this for every unknown word in the lesson, my vocabulary comprehension increased. This makes me able to fully understand what the writing is saying. Throughout the units, I learned about different countries’ university life, celebrations, social media presence, and cultural norms. Lingro would quiz me on each country’s passage, ensuring my reading comprehension (example 3).

lingro learning Spanish 101f. Unidad 2, Objective 6 “EXPLORACIÓN CULTURAL” Aplicar.