SPAN 101 (Activities)

In the beginning of class we were introduced to the vista Aventura’s text book. This textbook helped me a lot through the semester because I was able to learn more about the Spanish language with this book. In the textbook we learned things like how to greet one another, how to pronounce the different seasons, and how to pronounce different numbers as well. In the back of the book there is a Spanish to English and an English to guide to help with vocabulary. There were many examples in the book to help with anything. I liked the book because if there was anything I was struggling on the book was my number one source to go to. This is a completely new language and I feel like the book has helped me understand more and more as we continued learning.

We also had to watch videos and answer questions based off what we learned. This was extremely helpful because whenever we learned something in class these videos would help me get a greater understanding of what is going on in class. I could re-watch these videos as many times as I needed to get a better understanding of the material.

We also had compositions to write in class to show the teacher how much we are understanding. These helped me because the teacher made us create a brainstorm to help guide us in what we want to write about. For our first composition we had to write about things we like to do around campus. I knew exactly what I wanted to write about and went on to do so. I liked how my teacher gave me feedback and told me what I was doing wrong.

We had a couple discussion boards throughout the semester and for some of these we had to interact with other classmates. For this discussion board we had to have a conversation with another classmate and ask where they were from and ask them questions about class. These discussion boards helped because I feel like as time went on I was getting better in writing in Spanish as well as speaking the new language as well.

For our homework we had to listen to many different voicings and show that we understood what was said by answering questions. This helped with my interpreting Spanish skills. Slowly, but surely, I was able to understand what the person was saying in the recordings. I could listen to these recordings as many times as I wished and sometimes I had to constantly keep listening because I simply did not understand. Listening helped me get better at comprehending words and saying those words in Spanish.

On the website for the homework, there were always videos to guide on what you are learning or what you are about to learn coming up. These videos were extremely helpful because they broke everything down super easily and allowed me to get a better understanding. If I was stuck in class and did not really understand the lesson, I could just go to the website and watch some videos. Personally I feel like these videos go deeper in meaning and fully help me get a better knowledge of what is going on in the course.

In class we constantly went over different verbs. We went over a numerous amount of different verbs and even had to write paragraphs with them. In many cases we had to use the verbs and made sure we conjugated them as well. At first, conjugating them was extremely hard. However, we began to use them more and more in class and I was able to get a better understanding of how to use them. I feel like this was probably one of the most challenging parts of learning a new language because there are just so many verbs and they each have their own conjugations; however, once you understand how to use them and what is going on then they get slightly easier as time progresses.