Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication
Reflection
Fall of 2021, I took Spanish 201, Intermediate Spanish. This was my first time taking an asynchronous course, which required very limited contact with the professor and other students, as well as being tasked with keeping up with learning and assignments on my own.
As a result of the pandemic, I decided to take advantage of online learning and convenience, and I’m very glad that I did. This class was one of the best and most thorough language speaking courses I’ve ever taken. The assignments were informative and challenging, the projects were fun and interesting, and the biweekly quizzes kept me on my toes. However, I struggled with not having direct contact with the professor and holding myself accountable for absorbing the information. At times, it was easy to forget about the course because there weren’t class times. Especially because this course has been significantly harder in the content and amount of work required than other classes I’ve taken in the past.
Despite the new obstacles I was faced with in this class, I powered through and took advantage of resources and extra practice to excel past my doubts in order to complete all of the work. This course specifically strengthened my time management skills and studying methods while simultaneously improving all aspects of my Spanish speaking.
The following document is one of the projects fully demonstrating how I advanced in this class. I’d never written this amount in Spanish in the past or utilized more than one conjugation to create a timeline before.
Proyecto15.SPAN201.emilybrooksExploring Culture
At the end of each unit after all of the basics were covered, Contraseña, the website we used to learn and do homework, would include assignments that would require me to go into depth about a Spanish-speaking country’s culture in relation to what we were learning. For example, in Unit 14, we were learning about art and culture. The assignment required me to search for what types of art were common, why they were popular and famous artists that are prominent in the country.
Although this is just one example of exploring the culture through class, I looked forward to being able to research a country that I was interested in. Because my family originates from Puerto Rico, I was given the opportunity to look at what life is like there through different aspects of culture. Especially since this class goes more into depth with immigration, Spanish-speaking countries’ history, social status quos and so much more.
exploracionculturalun14.SPAN201.emilybrooksEngaging in Communities
In the beginning of the semester, I didn’t know Ricky Weeks. Through the dozens of projects we’ve prepared for and done together, I’ve made a connection with someone who I initially only talked to because we were assigned partners. Past partners I’ve had were rushed because people in class would switch often, but having one person to focus on all the projects with was both beneficial and fun. Ricky and I helped each other through anything we were struggling with regarding grammar or vocabulary, studied together and developed a schedule for recording our projects that worked for both of us. Having Ricky in this class and doing speaking projects together significantly helped my anxiety of speaking Spanish to people that I don’t know well. I’m glad that this was an aspect of the class and that I had such an amazing partner!
Interpersonal Communication
In this course, I got to do two more TalkAbroad conversations, a discussion board almost every week, and projects with Ricky. All of the assignments corresponded with what I was learning about at the time, so it was much easier to put into practice the vocabulary and new verb tenses I was studying. These conversations developed my social speaking and confidence more than any other activity in this course.
My first TalkAbroad for this semester was with Danilo Calero and we had such a good time! Since I hadn’t done a TA since earlier this year, I was very nervous and tried to rush through the conversation. Danilo recognized this and immediately eased my anxiety. We asked each other questions about where we’ve gone to vacation, I got to know more about ecotourism in Nicaragua, and found common ground in how invested we both are in the health of nature. He was tentative, intelligent and very funny. The more that I get to practice having casual conversations, the more comfortable I get to make mistakes and recover.
Additionally, the weekly discussion boards were great for expanding vocabulary through doing small activities. My favorite was discussion board #11, where we got to put together our own outfit from our favorite store while including prices and what occasion it was for. As the discussion boards got more difficult, I would start to overthink how and what I would write about. After completing multiple, I started to ease up and not be self-critical about writing what I thought. Other student’s responses and thoughts also made me realize that it was just a small activity to interact with each other and practice our Spanish. In the future, I would like to take advantage of reading and commenting on multiple other people’s posts to get to know them better as well as practicing my social Spanish skills.
Ir-a-La-Universidad_ClasePresentational Speaking
Besides the partner projects that we had during the semester, I also completed several solo assignments that would require me to present and record what the project was about.
My favorite presentation was Proyecto 12. I had to talk about a place I want to go in the future to practice ecotourism or pretend that I’d already traveled there. I chose La Ciudad Perdida in Colombia, a place that I actually want to travel to someday because I studied the activities, nature and history of the land. I’d never done a presentation in Spanish for class either, so making flash cards was a helpful tip that Contraseña gave before the project prep assignments. I had a good time imagining traveling to a famous ecotourism spot while I learned some new facts about history that I hadn’t studied before.
The following files are the powerpoint presentation slides and my flashcards that I used to practice before I presented.
Proyecto12.SPAN201.EmilyBrooksproyecto12flashcards.SPAN201.emilybrooks
Presentational Writing
Another project that Ricky and I did together was presenting flyers of our ecotourism destinations to each other.
The assignment asked us to make a flyer that advertised our ecotourism destination of interest as well as including a personal testimony of someone that had visited the place more than once in order to practice our use of preterite and imperfect tense use. The first challenge I faced with this project was trying to create a flyer that didn’t have too many words, adding a way to grab the reader’s attention and using both verb tenses correctly. Secondly, trying to present over Zoom with sharing screens, recording and taking turns was a hard adjustment we both had to make. We didn’t record the final submission on the first try either. After figuring out how to word my advertisement and two recording attempts, we finally were able to present our flyers. Next time, I’d like to take more time to use what I learned this time around to make a flyer that is better than the one I presented.
The following document is my flyer for my ecotourism destination.
conversaciones12.SPAN201Interpretive Listening
During Unit 15, our discussion board had us watch a video completely in Spanish and answer questions about it. The video focused on the discovery of America and the history that it entailed.
The video is more fast paced than videos I had watched in Spanish 101 or 102, which was intimidating at first. I had no idea what to expect, how to interpret it or take notes to be able to answer the questions in the discussion board. Luckily, I’m a history major, so I knew most of the facts discussed in the video, but trying to listen and absorb the information was very hard. I tried not to focus to much on knowing every word, rather gathering the facts necessary to gain the main idea. Additionally, I listened to it more than once to get information I didn’t hear the first time around.
This assignment was intimidating but interesting. It was a great way to practice my listening skills and develop methods to help me in a test setting or casual conversation. The video and my discussion board answers are below.
Interpretive Reading
As a portion of Unit 14, we were studying art and different aspects of how it’s created along with famous artists. In discussion board 14, we virtually visited the Museum Doña Sofia and explored varieties of exhibitions and collections, wrote about our favorite artists and works, then shared with other students.
The entire website is in Spanish, so in order to navigate to get the information I needed, capable reading skills were crucial. Especially once I found an exhibition I wanted to write about, all of it was Spanish. At first, I was frustrated because reading has never been a strong suit for me, and I kept misinterpreting the information. All it took was for me to take a deep breath and break down the text into what vocabulary I knew and a select amount of words I didn’t. After that, it was a breeze to gather the details of the artists I was researching. In the future, I want to able to put this into use as soon as I am faced with Spanish text. Having that be second nature will truly benefit me in the future.
The following link is a specific reading I had to interpret in order to learn more about this artist and their work, as well as my discussion board response.
https://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/vivian-suter
discussionboard14.SPAN201.emilybrooks