Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

There are millions of people who go to study abroad in Spanish speaking countries, dozens of which are the first in their family’s history to have attended a university of some type. The Hispanic world holds high value towards family relationships as a majority of people will work hard to eventually, one day, support their family financially and keep in touch with them throughout everything. I grew to understand and relate the value and importance of family that Hispanic people hold.

These values assisted me in appreciating Hispanic cultures as I understood where they were coming from and felt a strong bond for having the same desire as they have. There is something that connects us all together and the more we look into ourselves and are accepting, the more we can appreciate those around us. Prior to this course I had believed that Hispanic’s had been still partaking in siesta’s, upon learning that is becoming less common, I was lead to look through and find more information on the topic to help me better my understanding of why. I found out that our culture and Hispanic culture shared similarities in finding people who were talented, hardworking, and courageous as worthy of gaining popularity and support from a majority of people.

Engaging in Communities

It is important to keep engaged in your community as what is culturally appropriate in your community may not be as accepted in another community.  Society changes and with those changes, things that were once acceptable may not be as widely accepted anymore.  There had been hot debate in regards to the term “Latinx” to refer to those who do not identify to a gender-role, the issue being that most people did not properly understand the culture behind Hispanics and why they found that term offensive.  This is one example that shows us how it is always important to understand other people’s cultures and respect their views.

Interpersonal Communication

I was able to have interpersonal communication with my classmates, professor, and family to help assist me in learning Spanish and pronunciation.  I did various writing activities and shared them with the class to showcase my abilities and we discussed what I wrote and how I could further improve my sentences.  Practicing being able to communicate effectively, and correctly, in Spanish was what I focused on most while improving my communication skill.

I found that working on communicating with my classmates on different assignments was helpful as we both debated on the best way to form the sentence and we asked each other questions to help each other grow.  Having the professor assist me with my communication skills was also another factor that helped me greatly, as they we’re able to deduce my line of thought and reasoning, and then helped me form it into a sentence in Spanish.  I was also able to practice communication with my dad as he had lived in Mexico for a long while and was once fluent in Spanish, he was able to assist me in memorization and learning questions and answers, as well as sentence structures.

I found that with each activity I was able to memorize more of the rules in the Spanish language while also learning that those rules aren’t always concrete in how they appear, as some words broke these rules under special circumstances.  I did, however, find learning Spanish phrases difficult as I would remember what certain words say, I would know in what context they would most likely be used in, but I did not know the English translation or what I was exactly saying.  I was able to overcome this by practicing at home and watching videos online that helped dive deeper into the subject.  I do not believe I was able to excel at anything, as I had to keep a slow pace throughout the course in order to properly digest the language and carefully assemble my sentences. That way I kept errors to a minimum.  I believe I would have given myself more time to practice if I could do things differently.

Presentational Speaking

In Spanish class we were given assignments to write down certain things about ourselves or the question on the board and then we had to openly speak our answers out loud to the class.  Some of these were things such as stating what the time was on the board, or telling our class two truths and one lie about ourselves, then having to confirm or deny the answers our classmates responded with.

I found that writing out my sentences before I spoke out loud to the class greatly helped me with making sure everything I was doing was correct before I said anything out loud.  I found certain words challenging and found myself second guessing how to pronounce certain words.  I was able to overcome this challenge by pronouncing the words how I thought they would sound, and if it were wrong, my professor helped assist me in the correct pronunciation of the word and I repeated that word correctly before continuing my sentence.  I found that I succeeded more in the class when I was given time to write down my thoughts and how I wanted to say my sentence than I did when I had to reply instantly with a sentence like we did for the group activities.  I believe next time I would have liked to try and memorize more common questions and how I would answer those common questions that way I didn’t have to stop and think about it.

Interpretive Listening

When it came to listening to Spanish, not only was this a constant in the classroom, but I also went into more research at home by watching Youtube videos about certain topics such as ser and estar.  I was able to listen to some assignments on the homework provided to me that helped me learn what to look out for in a conversation and how to pick up on key words and pronunciations.

I was listening to different Spanish youtube videos that taught basic and easy methods on learning Spanish and how to remember phrases and words, as well as providing guidance in answering and asking questions.  It was challenging finding a video that worked for me as I was often lost or confused and felt like finding the right explanation was something of difficulty for me.  I found the way some people explained Spanish and it’s rules, while also giving visuals and examples really helped me in keeping focus on the video an listening to how they pronounced specific words and questions.  I believe listening to these questions and explanations helped me in remembering what to look for in conversations and how I should react and respond when prompted to by these conversations

Interpretive Reading

Throughout the entire course we were given copious amounts of material to read and digest.  Inside of class we were able to read and figure out Spanish sentences while also having an explanation given to us about why that sentence reads as it did and what it’s literal translation said.  Outside of class I worked on LingroLearning to read examples of both formal and informal bodies of text.

Some of these activities were reading examples such as a formal letter that was written and we were tasked with finding personality traits listed throughout the letter.  Another example was at home when I was working on LingroLearning, an assignment tasked me with not only knowing how to read the texts given, but to also fill in the blanks with the appropriate response.  What confused me most was when certain words were not cognates of each other and meant something different in Spanish than they did in English.  I was able to overcome this by reading the text surrounding the word to determine what the word itself could potentially mean.  I found it interesting that a lot of Spanish text looked like English text, and that helped with breaking down sentences and learning what they were saying.  I feel as though with each assignment it let me get more accustomed to learning sentence structures and how to read them.

image is an example taken from my LingroLearning assignment.