Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Being a native Spanish speaker and being born in Central America, I have learned to understand different cultural perspectives. Being that of the differences in personal space and the way to greet people from both American cultures and Hispanic cultures to important pastimes that people hold near and dear to their hearts from either culture. For example, from Latin America to Spain, many Spanish speakers live and breathe soccer. Families have thier favorite soccer teams, and wear thier jerseys on game days. Many Americans share those same type of interests with other sports, like baseball, football and basketball. But there are many differences that I have had to learn to understand and respect. Growing up I was always show to greet family and friends with a kiss on the cheek and a hug, but In the United States, things are much different. The common greeting is a firm handshake. Being able to experience both cultures have given me a stong understanding of each cultural perspective.

Engaging in Communities

The importance of engaging in your immediate community and the global community is very valuable. Being able to communicate with everyone in the community helps create a stronger bond and a better community. The United States is a very diverse country. There are people that come from many different countries and backgrounds. It is always important to be able to communicate with your neighbors.

Interpersonal Communication

This semester I have had many opportunities to use interpersonal communications. I have had discussion boards about different aspects of hispanic culture and had to interact with other students and respond to their ideas and posts. I have conducted interviews with other students where we had to communicate to each other based on a specific scenario and perform the entire interview in Spanish. I have also had interviews with the professor that were not scripted, challenging our ability to have a natural conversation in Spanish.

I have learned a great deal from these assignments. My interpersonal communication skills have improved doing the interviews with the students and the professor. A challenge during the interview was my ability to understand my partner during interviews and them being able to understand me. Through practice and communication we were able to overcome the challenges and accomplish the task. The discussion boards helped me understand how other students from the United States view hispanic culture and being able to communicate differences and similarities helped further my understanding.

Presentational Speaking

Throughout the semester we had several oral quizzes. These quizzes tasked us to read questions in Spanish and respond to them in Spanish. I was also given an assignment to present the Spanish alphabet by screen recording a power point presentation and speaking Spanish words that started with each letter in the Spanish alphabet.

I excelled at the oral presentations and quizzes because of my hispanic background. Spanish is my first language and I have a strong foundation for Spanish. If i could do the assignments again, I would try to improve my pronunciation and make my speech more fluid.

Presentational Writing

I had an assignment that tasked me to write a paragraph on what types of activities are available for students at the ODU campus. This assignment improved my presentational writing because it was fully written in Spanish.

This assignment was probably the most challenging for me and helped my grow the most. My ability to write clearly in Spanish has grown and it has become easier. I had difficulties making it sound natural and not full of short statements but through repetition I was able to improve. If I could do the assignment differently, I would try to make the composition sound more natural.

Interpretive Listening

Some interpretive listening activities I have completed this year were video skits that I had to listen to and then answer questions about after. Another assignment I did was one where I had to listen to a video file and choose the correct answer according to what was being said in the audio file in Spanish. I also listened to a song that was sung in Spanish and had to understand its meaning.

I excelled in this area because I believe my interpretive listening is my strongest ability in Spanish. These assignments are always interesting because I was able to learn things I did not know before and I was able to see how other communicate. My ability to listen and clearly understand what is being said has grown with each activity.

Interpretive Reading

Throughout the semester I had to read about different cultural aspects from the text book. I also had to read short stories answer questions about them.

I found these assignments interesting because I was able to learn more about different hispanic cultures. These assignments were not very challenging for me but they did help improve my ability to read in Spanish. My biggest take away was understanding and learning different aspects from other hispanic cultures.