Hispanic Identities and Cultures

In this course, I was challenged to learn about several different aspects of hispanic culture. This included work, art and gastronomy, identity, geography, and much more. Learning all of these different things about hispanic countries has broadened my knowledge of the spanish speaking world, and given me new perspectives about various different aspects of culture. For example, our discussion boards help to broaden my thoughts and introduce me to new ideas from my peers that I have not considered. Overall, this class has given me the opportunity to learn about many new things and gain perspective into hispanic identity and culture.

Activities

One thing that helped enforce what I learned in class was the activities that went along with each module. These activities mostly stemmed from the book, but they provided me with the reiteration I needed to be able to retain the information given to me. One example of an activity that I found helpful is below. This assignment helped me learn the day-to-day habits of people from México, Bogotá, and Barcelona. I was able to compare this information with the customs that I practice in my life and learn how these things change from country to country. For example, Barcelona and Bogotá both go to eat at 2:00 in the afternoon, whereas in the U.S. we typically eat lunch midday.

Video Presentations

Another assignment that I feel helped me throughout the semester was the video presentation. I completed three of these, and they guided me to learn more about other countries and cultures because I had to learn about the topics for each one and find information to display each prompt. Also, I feel as though my speech was improved with these presentations because I was required to speak without a script, which imitates real life conversation. For example, the first presentation I did was to promote tourism in a spanish speaking country. The country I chose was Spain, and I was able to learn about major cities within the country, and notable places and foods that each city offers.

Weekly Diaries

Weekly diaries were a large part of this class, especially because it is an assignment that occurred weekly. The goal of these diaries was to reflect on the module we learned about that week with a series of questions. These reflections would help to create essays and the final video presentation, and would be a source to look back upon as a recap. I feel as though these aided me in the writing aspect because every week I was using new vocabulary from the module and finding ways to explain my thoughts about the topics. Even though the questions remained the same, I feel like I was still challenged to think about my answers each week, and that each module gave me different thoughts to portray.

Discussion Board

Discussion boards were also a large part of the class and occurred almost every week. I ended up enjoying the discussion boards a lot more than I anticipated because they gave me the ability to learn the perspectives of my classmates and broaden my own thoughts. These boards posed very important cultural topics, such as the quality of life and standard of living, which challenged me to think critically about my response and use the information from the module and the original question to support my thought process. In addition, many of these topics gave me insight into how culture is different between the United States and other countries. I feel like I was able to develop more critical thinking skills because of the discussion boards, and I also feel as though I have more knowledge about current issues that other countries face.