Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication
An Effective Reflection Is
- I would say from now to the start of the semester I have grown. I have learned words that I would use on a day to day life. I have gotten better a understanding the grammar and how to speak the basic.
An Effective Reflection is not
- I would say what helped me was testing myself on the words we were learning by looking at the word and knowing what it might in English.
Exploring Culture
Spanish culture is different from our culture but not totally different. It’s overwhelming/confusing. Just like any other culture, they have different food,holidays, activities and music than ours. For example here in the U.S.A we are known to have our college students stay in dorms. The Spanish culture is different because their students don’t stay in dorms and have more freedom/ responsibilities.
By watching the videos and practicing the skills, I was able to gain a better understanding of Hispanic culture. By studying the vocabulary and meanings of the words in our homework, I learned more about Hispanic culture. I found that the practices gave me a better understanding of how some cultures are similar in some ways, even though they are different in others.The fact that the college students don’t live/stay on campus , would be a problem for me if I was to go to school there. I say this because I don’t think I would have the energy to get up and drive or take a bus to class in the morings.
Engaging in Communities
In my opinion, an engaged community is feeling like you’re a part of a group or something greater than yourself and a few friends.
Interpersonal Communication
This semester we worked on understanding how to talk and write in spanish. I practice one and two way communication. By hearing what the other person was saying I had to understand what was being said and how to communicate back.
I felt that when we had speaking or writing projects that were shared with the class, how do you and others connect by saying that they or you had something in common. It is also helpful when you listen to what others are saying so you can respond, also so I could try to understand what they are saying so I could respond. I feel that speaking was more difficult than listening or writing just because of the pronunciation. Overall, I have learned how to read and write in Spanish and understand what is being said or asked of me.
Presentational Speaking
Some speaking assessments I had to do were mostly talking about myself. I would talk about myself, things I like and dislike, about my school and what my typical life here at Odu looks like.
I would say that the interviews were the hardest part out of all the speaking assessments. I feel that it was the hardest because you knew that it was going to be on the whole unit you learned but you didn’t know what was going to be asked in those 5 minutes. I enjoyed doing the speaking projects where we just sent our video in because I could practice and start over if I needed to. I think I just have a harder time understanding what is being asked of me and being able to respond fast enough for example for the interviews.
Presentational Writing
This semester we practiced writing skills by having a topic based around the terms we were learning. Some assessments we would have to write a paper around the topic given in Spanish, with a certain amount of words and time given.
For my first year of Spanish, I feel I did well on the writing parts. I had some problems when it came to writing in class for the test, because I had a hard time remembering the grammar. The writing became easier once I practiced more and studied the grammar more, the more homework we got the more I would be practicing. I would try to keep working on what I know and add on from there, despite new units meaning more words and more grammar.
Interpretive Listening
Some listening activities I did this semester were the interviews, reflections for other’s projects and some of the work on lingro.
Listening can be a little hard sometimes but when I really listen hard and focus on the key words being said it gets easier. It seems that when you listen for key words, you gain a better understanding of what is being said or requested. I would say my take away from listening to others would be that I got a better understanding about others. For the speaking project, most of the time others would tell me about themselves, so if I didn’t understand what they were saying, I would go back to the vocabulary. I feel that it pushed me to study more because of the fact that I wanted to know what they were telling me about themselves.
Interpretive Reading
The reading part of the semester was mostly reading other people’s projects on lingro and reading the questions for the homeworks.
While reading Spanish, the most confusing part for me was the grammar, and I kept wanting to translate what was being said into English. When I would do that it wouldn’t say right through and I would get confused. I think that once I accepted that the grammar was going to be different and that I couldn’t translate everything back to the way it would be said in English, I became better at it. Over all, I have been able to read more Spanish than I did at the beginning of the semester