Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

This semester, I was able to understand the Hispanic culture a bit more through some of my classmates projects and content in the Contraseña modules. For example, one of my classmates made a video about the traditions of a quinceañera. Another example is that there was a unit on traditions that provided me with more knowledge into some cultural practices in different countries; like one I remember was drinking mate.

This helps me better understand values in hispanic culture because we were able to learn about the history around it. For example for the quince video, even though I am hispanic I was still able to learn somethings that were new because I was never able to have a quince, so that was nice. They also challenge my worldview because I am Peruvian and with what we learned in class I got to see that there are some differences in other hispanic cultures, and that we are not all the same. 

Engaging in Communities

I think that engaging with the hispanic community is super important. As I am hispanic I love to meet another latinos on campus because honestly their isn’t alot of us. I am apart of the Latino Student Alliance here at school so I am able to communicate with alot of students. Starting next year I will be the president of WEPA which is our latin dance org here on campus so I am excited about having our latino community grow and welcome non latino students to join and learn about our culture as well.

Interpersonal Communication

This semester I was apart of two 15 minute conversation with Spanish speakers from different countries. We did this on talk aboard. It gave me a chance to interact with people from other hispanic countries other than Peru, which is where I am from.

When talking to the people on talkabroad I was honestly a bit nervous. My Spanish is not perfect so there were still a few new words I learned. I also picked Spanish speakers from different countries so I could hear that different accents they have and how words from different countries have can have different meanings and could be said differently too.

Presentational Speaking

The TalkAbroad conversation was an example of presentational speaking because they were recorded. However, another example are the video projects we made after every unit. Those were all shown in class to our peers and then graded by our professor.

The talk abroad were a bit challenging because they were lengthy conversations with people I have never met, and we were given certain things we needed to talk about as well as stay in a certain criteria. However, with the project videos, I loved making them because we were able to be as creative as we wanted and we were able to talk about whatever it is we wanted as long as it related to the topic.

Presentational Writing

This semester, we wrote essays in class as part of the second part of our project for each unit. We were given prompts and some questions to answer. We would have to write between 250 and 300 words in class.

With this being the first spanish class I have taken since my freshmen year of highschool it was difficult learning all the basic rules again. However, once I got the hang of it again I felt like I was able to answer the prompts without too much difficulty.

Interpretive Listening

For listening we had multiple ways we did this, one being how we would always watch an instructional video that was all in Spanish at the start of every unit then answer questions about it. Another being watching our peers projects in class and leaving comments about it. Last one being on Contraseña for homework there would be some listening activities. (Picture of that example is below)

Other things in Spanish I have listened too are of course my parents, they both speak to me in Spanish so I am always practicing with them. As well as music; I love Spanish music, so I have started to listen to all type of Spanish genres.

Interpretive Reading

This semester we read multiple poems, and articles on Hispanic culture. One example would be the poems, we had to read a Spanish poem and write about what we thinK the poem was trying to interpret. Another example is the article below. It was an article on the progression of stereotypes in Mexico. This article was relevant, because most American media stereotypes Mexico and Mexicans. We also had to read and write about this article.