Exploring Culture

In Spanish 102 I learned a lot of culture practices in Hispanic culture such as what people like to do on their free time, what people like to eat, family values and what people do to care for themselves. A lot of my research was based in Guatemala, Chile, and Mexico. I learned that many people enjoyed futbol on their free time and watching it professional. healthcare is more accessible in the public than in private sectors coming out of their social security. Family has a major importance in people in Hispanic culture most people prefer living with their family when going to school. The traditional dishes in Hispanic cultures varies with lots of flavors and dishes like ceviche, huevos rancheros, and tamales.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging with the Spanish community is a huge plus to provide positive influences or partnerships. Putting in the effort goes in to show you respect others culture and traditions by learning their language.

Interpersonal Communication

In Spanish 102 I had an opportunity to speak with two native Spanish speakers using the Talk Abroad program. The first interview was with a native speaker from Guatemala. I feel like I learned a lot from listing to her and then getting to talk to her about my family. It was a little difficult to understand her accent but she slowed down for me and we had a nice conversation. The second interview I did was with someone from Mexico and I had a lot of difficulty hearing her because of connection errors but overall she was really caring and understanding. Overall I believe getting to speak to native speakers really challenged me and helped me understand more about their culture and it also helped me understand Spanish more clearly

Presentational Speaking

In this course I did not have to do any interviews in person but I did practice my Spanish with some of my coworkers in the workplace environment. Next time it would be more beneficial of me to record interviews to show improvement of my knowledge.

Presentational Writing

In Spanish 102 I got to learn about healthcare on lingro learning. We were given a health pamphlet and had to understand the meaning. Reading the pamphlet was a littler easier than having to read an article. Next time I could do a lot better in understanding how to conjugate my verbs.

Interpretive Listening

I have difficulty in listing to recordings in Spanish because I believe I like to focus to much of each individual word and not understand a couple words at a time and put the sentence together. In lingro learning we had many learning exercises where we listened to a scenario and had to understand what they were talking about. I thought it was interesting listing to scenarios and answering questions about how we understood them. I over came the diffuculity by listing to them over and over.

Interpretive Reading

Reading long paragraphs in Spanish was the most challenging for me. I spent so much time on one sentence later forgetting what the other sentences were about. To overcome this challenge I broke each sentence done than later put it all together. The exams in this class involved reading short essays as well with lingro learning.