Instructions

Exploring Culture

For me to understand someone else culture I have to get the whole view point of what is going on in their society and way of life. That came with watching a lot of videos and reading articles surrounding the countries.

The videos over everything else helped me a lot. People with post videos on the internet about their lives in other countries. I will sit there and soak in everything I can. When I have a question about something specific that I saw in the video, I go online and search for answer to better understand the culture. Overall, people all around the world have a different view point of life than we Americans do that is okay. There is nothing wrong with that, in fact I think we should embrace some traditions from other countries. For example, Hispanics put a high value on family and their time together. In my culture we value family but Hispanics take it to the next level where they will have generations live in the household and I fully encourage that. I learned something new every time I watched a video or read and article. It opened me eyes to new concepts.

Engaging in Communities

People from various origins should be empowered and integrated. Those who feel left out might exert more control over their own life and the lives of those around them. When members of the community from all backgrounds collaborate, they frequently discover that they have a lot in common.
Organize neighborhood networks of neighbors. The more informed and motivated members of a community, the more probable it is that it will succeed in achieving its objectives.

In the veteran world we try to make the world a better place. A group of my friends created Recycle For Veterans, where we go out on the beach and pick up trash. This bring all types of people together. A lot of them are veterans from hard places but we also get civilian that want to help out. As were are picking up trash we get to know each other and see where everyone came from and how as a veteran we can help.

Interpersonal Communication

I had two Talk Abroad conversations this semester. For this assignment the professor chooses a topic and you are supposed to speak to a individual that you have never met, in Spanish.

During this class we had multiple discussion board posts and TalkAbroad. Each one provides something different for me to learn from. The discussion posts, I felt taught me more about other people’s culture than anything thing else. On one post, we read and talked about the medical system difference between the United States and Spain. Just reading the article that was assigned opened up my eyes to how other countries health care system works. These questions were also asked during the TalkAbroad conversation. Trying to figure out how to say questions regarding health care and comprehending what was being said was the hardest part. What made it hard was some times the person on the other end might be speaking a little to fast for me to understand everything so to overcome that, I listened for key words instead of trying to focus on every word that was being said. This allowed me to get the jist of the sentence.

Presentational Speaking

One of our assignments was to listen to the professor and answer in Spanish. The conversation covered what types of sports we like and do we have a favorite food.

The presentation below is one of two that we did in class. This particular one was about what types of sports we like and out favorite food. In this one, I struggled really with vocab. It was the words that I didn’t practice or were to advanced for me to know. To avoid this happening in the future I really need to study more on our basic vocabulary and focus on the them more. We did do a second video for class. The second one was on health and the body. This one was one of the tougher ones because the vocabulary or terminology can get a little confusing and hard when you trying to explain that you got an MRI on your wrist. But, like I said before, always just go back to the basics. I will say there were a lot of things I did not understand in the second presentation, just due to how fast the conversation was moving. I was able to pick out keys key terms and work with it.

Presentational Writing

There were multiple time in this class where we had to investigate a certain country and what goes on in their culture. This particular one below is about sports with Guatemala.

As I was searching google, it was hard than I thought it was going to be. When it came to searching for sports that had to deal with men, it was really easy. Everything I needed popped. It wasn’t till I got to researching the females and there was less information on them than I expected. I was able to grab all my research and it was time to write. At this point I was not confident in my abilities to form more than a basic sentence. As you can see below, I was answering the questions with almost one word answers. Now I confident to expand on my answers and questions in the future.

Interpretive Listening

There were multiple video’s that we watched, each other them covered different topics. Both of the videos were in Spanish. The one that stuck with me, was the different types of food from different countries.

In this video people say what their favorite sports are. At first it was troubling, they were speaking so fast and I was trying to comprehend what was being said. What helped was some people had the liking of the same sports so I was able to here vocab words over and over again. That helps me remember it and understanding what it is supposed to sound like. Listening people speak, allows me to practice on making out words and in the end makes my Spanish speaking better each time I listen to it.

Interpretive Reading

To educate myself on Hispanic traditions, I decided to read more on the importance of food in the culture. Every culture is different on how they view food and the meaning behind it. I wanted to dive deeper than a discussion post so I read different articles, below is one of them.

Cooking is a communal activity in the Hispanic culture. Women of all ages frequently get together to prepare substantial family meals. Family customs and recipes are passed down through the generations. Traditionally, cast iron pots and pans were used to cook anything over an open flame. Steaming was another technique applied. Meats were cooked over huge pits of boiling water while being wrapped with banana or cactus leaves. Another well-liked culinary technique was frying. Common cooking techniques are still used today; they are merely more practical.

Using cooking to connect to Hispanic culture. tucocina.us. (2022, January 5). Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://tucocina.us/blogs/blog/using-cooking-to-connect-to-hispanic-culture