After finishing Spanish 101 a year ago, I came into Spanish 102 with a little bit of understanding on how to take a foreign language course and learned a few things about Hispanic culture. Previously, I really struggled with putting complete sentences together and listening to sentences.  I knew those would be my challenges in taking a more advanced class.  Going into the class with this already known, I really focused on learning the vocabulary so that when I was in a conversation, even if I did not understand everything, I felt comfortable to respond based on the words that I did understand.   Having two conversations in Spanish with someone from another country, really opened my eyes to how similar our lifestyles are aside from the language we speak.   You will be able to hear my progress and growth from Spanish 101 to Spanish 102 with my artifact videos in the “activities” section of this website, including those two conversations. 

As an older college student who has been working in the banking industry, I have many clients with whom I use the banks interpreter system to be able to connect and understand their needs.  Now as I engage these clients, I will be able to describe my family along with the ability to describe my favorite sporting events, and how they make me feel.  I can converse with doctors or friends about my well-being.  Though I am far from perfect, I am excited to have this knowledge when I am in contact with my clients or someone who knows Spanish.  If my family and I decide to take a trip to a Spanish-speaking country, it will be fun to use some of my knowledge in asking about their favorite foods or sporting events in the area. 

I really enjoyed the TalkAbroad experience as it gave me a chance to interact with someone from a Spanish speaking country and gauge how they speak.  It showed me how much of a beginner I really am, as the way they used accents and the words flowed was flawless and impressive.  I knew that was going to be a struggle of mine as you can watch me say the alphabet and a few words below.  The difficulty I had with the TalkAbroad was the listening portion.  When she asked me a question, few times, I responded with the wrong answer.  As I listened to the recording back, I could hear the word that I missed which changed the meaning of the question completely.  For example, she asked how often I talk with my brothers, and I responded as if she asked if my brothers spoke Spanish.  I feel as though I had marked progress when I took the second conversation as I was able to respond and learn more about her and her area that she grew up in.  It was a fun conversation that we discussed similar fast-food restaurants that we both had in our cities.  I would work on my accents and listening skills more as, while, I had a great time conversing, I missed some questions she asked and answers.  I struggled with knowing I missed something until I heard part of what I understood and then tried to assume what she was saying in my follow up questions. 

One of the assignments we had was to introduce ourselves, say what our major is and something that we liked.  I thought I did well with this assignment as it was one of our first ones early in the semester.  We even had to respond to another classmate and answer their question that they had.  This is where I was challenged as I had to really focus on the words I did not know. In some cases, I had to look up the meaning of some of the words used to understand correctly what was being said.  I overcame this challenge by really engaging with the new vocabulary words each week and making sure I studied them for at least twenty minutes a day.  I excelled in the speaking part of the assignment though not so much about the pronunciation.  While I could get better at that, I am able to successfully use the correct words to get my point across in Spanish. 

One of the activities that I did involve reading about the importance of family structure in Hispanic families and I compared those with my own family.  I realized how different my family views are than that of Hispanic culture.  For example, the men being the placed over women, which gives males more rights, is a bizarre thought when I think of my own family. One thing that seems would never happen in traditional Hispanic culture is following the wife’s career path and having her as the breadwinner based on her own life goals.  Family to me means, working together through life supporting each other with different goals and obstacles that may arise.  Where in the traditional Hispanic culture, they seem to have set roles that each family member must follow based on what their past families did.  The article did mention that many have changed their views and no longer hold those traditions of machismo.  I got to write a small part about what I thought of my family which was, En mi familia, mi la esposa es muy inteligente e trabajador.  

The next listening activity that I did was with our professor, who asked questions and I had to answer them in a video.  As I was listening to it back, I could tell I needed work on my language control, as some words blended to much with how I would say it in English.  Part of that was due to my pronunciation, which is a struggle even today even though I did improve over the course of the semester.  I answered a couple questions wrong, as I listened, I got a few words mixed up which led to some confusion as I answered back.  The interesting part of this activity was the ability to talk continuous with few pauses as I felt confident in my study of the vocabulary but not so much in speaking it correctly consistently.