Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Lingro Learning, being our primary mode of instruction this year, was the most impactful when it came to learning about other cultures. Within the assigned readings were snippets of what daily life is like in Spanish speaking countries. It also tasked us with using the internet to search about various aspects of Spanish speaking countries, such as social media use, the practice of taking siestas in other countries, as well as what life is like on Spanish speaking university campuses.

Lingro Learning, in my experience, was the most beneficial piece of software that ive ever encountered in any of my time spent studying a foreign language. The platform has a skillful blend of mixing in things that are on the level of what you’re currently learning, while at the same time challenging your ability to interpret things you haven’t seen before. Many of the activities included videos of Spanish speaking students living their day to day life, and it helps immensely when trying to understand how activities I also engage in might look like in a foreign culture. Although I am constantly learning every day, I cannot truly say that what ive learned this semester has broken down any stereo types or misconceptions for me. I like to approach life with an open mind and no assumptions, especially when engaging in someone else culture! This course provided me with more respect for the Spanish speaking world than I already had!

Engaging in Communities

Engaging in both local and global communities is the most important thing you can do when learning a foreign language. After all it who you will most likely be testing your abilities with! When immersing yourself in culture both at home and abroad, you can a better sense of how language affects the way people think and how they view the world. With any foreign language course, culture is of the utmost importance as it is woven into the very fabric of the language itself. Most notably, the fact that language is always evolving is even more reason to be activley involved in communities that are using a foreign language as they are the ones directing how its evolving in its current iteration.

Although I have not immersed myself in Spanish culture, I do have plans to travel abroad one day. The majority of the places I hope to visit are Spanish speaking countries predominately, and I look forward to putting my skills ive learned into practice as well as strengthen them but put them to use in the real world!

Interpersonal Communication

This semester we were assigned to create a video showing us communicating with someone who was fluent in Spanish. For this assignment I chose to speak with my good friend Joel who spent a few years living in Spain and has very good Spanish speaking abilities.

This project was by far the most impactful when it comes to what I’ve learned this year in Spanish 101. The ability to speak with a friend reduced some of the nervousness I tend to fell when speaking to a professor or someone I don’t know in Spanish. Knowing some of my friends mannerisms and inflection of voice, gave me context clues that are not usually available to me when speaking to someone I’m not familiar with. By asking simple questions about where Joel is from, what his work experience was, an where he attended college, I gained the skills to be able to casually engage my Spanish speaking peers on and off campus.

Presentational Speaking

One of my presentation writing activities for Spanish 101 this semester included a tour of ODU campus. In this video we were asked to pick three locations we admired on campus and describe the activities that took place there.

This activity was greatly beneficial to me. By describing places on campus, we got plenty of practice in using new adjectives. Most notably was the use of words describing the location of buildings in reference to one another. This was challenging due to the fact that the majority of the vocabulary we used up until this point was mainly used to describe people and personalities. I found I excelled in memorizing adjectives to describe activities related to my studies, as well as using words to describe buildings.

Spanish-Project-4

Presentational Writing

Spanish-Letter

One of my class projects for Spanish 101 this year included writing a personal letter of recommendation for someone I admire. In this exercise, we described our nominee physically as well as used adjectives to describe their personality traits.

This project tested my ability to use most of the concepts I learned this semester while studying Spanish. This was the greatest test of my knowledge of adjectives, as it covered more areas than a persons current emotional state. Utilizing new words to describe my nominees work and their relationship with their students was challenging but broadened my knowledge of verbs and adjectives immensely. I feel l learned more from this project than any other thus far.

Interpretive Listening

One of the most beneficial interpretive listening exercises I completed outside of class, was the use of videos found on YouTube that featured casual conversations between two people in Spanish. In the video below, I learned to interpret the conversations between a few pairs of people with the help of my knowledge from class, as well as using the google translate application.

There were many activities that we completed this semester that enabled us to better interpret Spanish dialogue. A few of the most helpful were videos on Lingro Learning that featured classmates, roommates, friends, and students/teachers engaging in casual dialogue. I have maintained a decent ability to interpret dialogue when it is written, but hearing conversations being spoken in real time has helped my ability to read context clues immensely.

Interpretive Reading

One of the activities we completed as part of our Lingro Learning assignments was to read a paragraph that detailed some information about Students in Spanish speaking Universities. This article explained some of the cultural norms of families with college attending members as well as the details of the living arrangements.

This activity was very useful to me and I learned a great deal not only from this activity, but in the entire section that followed. Interpretive reading assignments often contian many words that may have not been discussed or presetned thus far in the semester. This forces you to use context clues to determine what the meaning of a word might be without directly knowing its meaning. Using information relevant to Spanihs culture is also helpful as it engulfs the reader in spanish speaking mindset, which for me, helps my spanish to flow better when I practice myself.