Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

During Spanish 101 I was able to learn about the different cultural perspectives and there were a few ways that helped me to better understand them. One of the ways that I learned about the different cultural perspectives was participating within discussion boards through the class. These discussions boards had me read or research information about different cultural perspectives within Spanish speaking countries. The other way that I learned about the cultural perspectives was reading the textbook for the class and seeing what it says that people way do differently in Spanish speaking countries.

Between participating within the discussions boards and reading the textbook, I was able to better understand a lot of things related to the cultural perspectives within Spanish speaking countries. In doing these activities I was able to better understand values and attitudes in the Hispanic culture as well as my own, by seeing what people do within the Spanish speaking countries that people in the U.S. do not do. People in Spanish speaking countries seem to have better connections with family and are more personal with greetings and introductions than people in the U.S. are. While doing these activities, they challenged me to think outside of how things are within the U.S. and try to understand how people within other countries interact with each other and why they interact in the ways that they do. The challenges that the different perspectives revealed to me was overall trying to remember that the people within these different countries all grew up in different society and ways of living than in U.S., because of how a lot of their perspectives are quite different than those within the U.S. are. The activities that I did forced me to work through a stereotype that I had for Spanish speaking countries which was that they were not as wealthy as we are in the U.S., which I found to be a false stereotype because they are able to do most if not all of the things that we can within the U.S., they just do them differently. Overall, these activities allowed me to think outside the box and learn about the different cultural perspectives that are within Spanish speaking countries.

Engaging in Communities

Within our local and global communities there are many great people that all appreciate when people come together and engage in the community. Engaging within our communities can mean the difference of a good day or a bad day for somebody, or it might mean the difference between a meal or going hungry for somebody else. When people are engaging and helping their communities great things can happen and great people can live better lives due to the help you are giving to the community.

In my experiences within my community, I have engaged a few times and helped a few people when needed. I have participated in a color run, formed from my high schools honor society, in which the proceeds when to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I have also been a bell ringer for the Salvation Army which helps to provide goods for families in need. I have helped my neighbors take care of their pets when they needed help, and I have also helped my neighbors by cutting their grass when needed. All of these things that I have done helped my community to live better and happier and it also helped to fund some organizations that can go a long way for helping out many people with their illnesses or lack of finances. I am happy to be able to help my community with these things and these helped me to see the importance in engaging in the community, whether it be my local community or the global community.

Interpersonal Communication

Within this semester I have completed a few activities in which I worked or communicated with somebody else. One of the activities was having two interviews with another classmate within Spanish. Another one was participating within discussion boards within Spanish. Both of these activities helped me to improve upon my understanding of Spanish.

Within the interviews with another classmate I was able help grow my understanding of Spanish because I needed to be able to remember and understand the language enough to have a conversation with the classmate. It helped me build upon my ability to remember and speak Spanish on the fly without looking at notes. This was difficult because of having to remember what we learned enough in Spanish to be able to speak it to a classmate, but I overcame that by doing a lot of studying over the rules of the language and the vocabulary. I excelled at being able to keep the conversation going without there just being silence and I was able to do that by studying a set of questions to ask each other so that we did not forget. Overall, I learned how to be able to speak Spanish within a conversation, but I there was anything that I would do differently it would be studying more and hopefully sometime in the future actually have the conversation in person.

Within the discussion boards from this class I was able to develop an understanding of different cultures within Spanish speaking countries while also being able to talk to other people about them. One thing that was difficult to do was be able to understand their the other cultures point of view without being in their place, but I overcame that by learning more about the cultures and being able to visualize things better. I excelled at being able to talk about these different things while also criticizing anything or being rude about anything and I did this by trying my best to understand the other cultures point of view. Overall, within these discussion boards I learned about different cultures and if there was anything different that I would do next time it would be having more conversations within the discussion boards so that I can get more opinions and other peoples point of view on these subjects.

Presentational Speaking

Throughout this semester I have not really done many presentation style assignments or activities. I have done I assignment that is close to a presentation where I spoke some Spanish words in a presentation like manor. Besides the one assignment, I have not done anymore presentations relating to Spanish.

Within the above assignment I spoke some Spanish words in a presentation like manor, and the only thing that challenged me was trying to actually speak the words correctly. I overcame this challenge by practicing saying the words before I made the video. I excelled at going quickly through the words without messing up too much and having to reset the video. Next time I do an assignment like this I will try to better by accent while speaking Spanish so that I don’t sound so southern, and also I will practice the words more the insure that I say them all correctly.

Presentational Writing

Unfortunately this semester I have not written any kind of presentational writing relating to Spanish. The closest thing that I have was a quiz that I have to take at the very end of this class where I had to write a ten sentence paragraph about activities that can be done on the Old Dominion University Campus. I do not have access to this quiz due to it being locked after I submitted it, so I cannot provide it in this section.

During that quiz that I took, it helped me to gain a better understanding of what I need to work on overall and showed me that I do have the ability to write in Spanish if I try hard enough. The easiest part of the quiz was probably remembering the activities in general, while the hardest thing was forming grammatically correct sentences with the activities. I overcame these difficulties by thinking hard and remembering what I learned within my class. I excelled at being able to get all of the sentences completed within the time limit of twenty minutes and I did this by being able to create a quick structure of how I wanted to write the paragraph. I could do better next time by reviewing more of the material from class and studying more before attempting another quiz.

Interpretive Listening

During this semester I participated in some listening activities to help my understanding of Spanish. One of the activities was listening to some provided music in Spanish so that I could listen and recognize some of the Spanish within the songs. The other activity that I did was doing listening homework problems where I had to listen and answer questions based on what I heard.

Some of the things that I listened too are music videos that were provided by the professor and the recordings for the listening homework that I had to do. The hardest things for me was actually understanding what it was that they were saying because I am not used to hearing Spanish on a regular basis, but I was able to overcome this by listening multiple times to the recording or videos and piece together what I heard. I found the most interesting thing to be listening to the music videos and being able to understand some of the things they are saying within the song. My overall takeaway from these activities is that I need to work more on my listening skills so that I can better understand what people are saying in Spanish. I personally think that I might have grown a little bit with each activity because of being able to hear different voices and things so that I can better recognize them later.

Interpretive Reading

Within this semester there has only been one thing that would count at interpretive reading that I have done. That one this is reading sections out of the class textbook or on our homework website that would tell us about the different cultures or something like that, and of course it would all be in Spanish.

Unfortunately I am unable to put any examples of what I have read onto this page but I can definitely reflect upon it. The most challenging things about the readings were trying to remember some of the vocabulary and I was able to get by that by finding out what the vocabulary meant and then I could move on. The thing that I found most interesting about these reading was finding out about the different cultures and seeing how they lived. My overall takeaway from these readings was that there are many different cultures and types of people in this world and we have to try to respect everybody the way that we would want to be respected ourselves. I feel that I have grown with each reading because I have been able to learn more about the different cultures with every reading that I did.