SPAN 102
An Effective Reflection Is
I believe that I have grown into the Spanish speaking world. It is not fluent of course but, I feel like I have progressed a bit much of information that I can take in for a whole year. Starting Spanish 101 it was a bit difficult because it was a whole different language and going into Spanish 102 I was glad to see what I remembered in the past. I know it may not seem like I am good at it but, I like the way how I progress over time. My best assignment that I have done for Spanish 102 is a TalkAbroad assignment with someone online. We had a conversation about our family. There are a few weaknesses that I have. They are not understanding what is being said at times and pronouncing the words incorrectly. I do plan on getting better at those.
An Effective Reflection is not
There are people out there would disagree with my progress but, I do not mind a bit of criticisms because you should not care what anyone else think of how you are doing. Learn another language it could be useful in the future.
Artifacts
AUDIO
Instructions
Exploring Culture
I started to understand the culture a little bit of it and would love to continue into learning the Hispanic Culture. I know that we are far apart but are similar in some ways. Our culture tends to be hard workers and to never give up no matter what.
I have a better understanding is that we are not that different from one another. The thing that I could compare is that we care a lot of our faith in our religion. We also love our food. The we may have different kind of food but, we can agree that we all love each others famous dishes. I love their Empanadas and they love our butter chicken. Lastly nothing beats loving and caring about our families. In both cultures family is number one for us. We all have a special bond that no one can take away from us. Growing up I never really got bullied about my culture it was more towards my sisters because of how they look compared to the rest of the girls. My sisters never really let get to them because once they got into high school they got praised by everyone. It is more towards the younger audience not really having an understanding for one another and as they grow older they tend to know more about it.
Engaging in Communities
As I have recently added that I am a Muslim. Growing up in America I have not been able to engage in my community to the lack of diversity in my area. As I have been out of high school I have started doing good deeds for my people and give back to the community with my friends and families. It is important to engage with your community because it teaches you in ways that you did not understand.
These group of people above are my close friends and families. We all grew up in the same area with not much of a diverse group and as we got older we decided to join our families and engage in more of our religion. All of us had the chance to finally understand who we are as a group and how peaceful it is. We continue to stick together and continue to help our community grow.
Interpersonal Communication
I had two TalkAbroad assignment. I enjoyed doing this kind of assignment because I spoke to two completely different people with different backgrounds and culture. TalkAbroad is a website that you can talk to any random person that you want to in Spanish. You can talk about anything you want or anything that your professor provides you.
We were given a choice on who we would like to have a conversation with on TalkAbroad. Then we were given a topic to discuss with someone on TalkAbroad. The first topic was about Our families. We talked about how they are, describing each of family members, and what each of us do. Had a great experience with the first one it was a success. Besides the TalkAbroad we had to also do a couple videos of us answering the professors questions in Spanish. Same with doing discussion boards we would watch a video in Spanish and answer some questions. These were my favorite assignments. There were some difficult times where during the conversation on TalkAbroad. There were times where I would forget the pronunciations of some of the words and a few times where I did not understand what was being said. I overcame these by going back to the audio and try to fix what I was trying to say. Next time I want to be able to pronounce the words correctly. I know there are going to be times where I would not understand what is going on but, that is the way of learning. You make mistakes and you learn from it.
Presentational Speaking
I have done a few of the speaking portion assignments. These were my favorite assignments. The reason why I say that is because I feel like I grow more when I do these assignments and learn from other people. We have done some on TalkAbroad, Flipgrid, and with the professor.
Video
This was one of my best grade for the speaking portion. It was where the professor had prerecorded questions that had to be answered in Spanish. It can be challenging sometimes because since I am not fluent it takes me a bit longer to get the answers put together and to make sure it makes sense. I would review what I need to work on and would repeat the stuff that I messed up on. I feel like I am starting to think quicker and have a better response that is more understanding. There are definitely more to practice in Spanish, just trying to get done with the basics so I can keep moving forward with learning the hard parts. The only thing I would want to change is to be more confident with speaking Spanish.
Presentational Writing
I have not really done any writing portion in but I have had the chance to write in English and read some article about the Hispanic culture. There were also some videos that were spoken in Spanish culture. For example they were telling us their favorite sport or what they want to do in the future.
https://oureverydaylife.com/importance-of-family-structure-in-hispanic-families-9890197.html
“En la familia de cultura hispana, es similar a mi familia. My father is well respected in my family and is the provider for my family. My mother is a stay-at-home mother who takes care of all of her children and is very religious. As for us the children we are very close with one another, we respect our parents at all times, and are taught to be responsible for life choices. We are very grateful for everything our parents have done, they put our happiness first before anything.”
The first link is explaining how important family is in the Spanish culture and what role they have in a family. The bottom of it was my response to the article. It is how it is similar to my family and how each of the roles in the Hispanic culture is similar. The second link is about them telling us what their favorite sport is. It was sort of difficult because their are times where I do not know what is being said. It became easier when I was trying to understand what they were saying I would look at the captions after to get a better understanding. The thing is I try to focus on the key words that are being said and that is how I could do better next time is focus on key words.
Interpretive Listening
The best interpretive listening activity that I have done has been through this website called Lingro Learning. Throughout the semester we get assignments that would help us have a better understanding for Spanish, https://lingrolearning.com/courses/contrasena/. there are some assignments where you would have to listen to the audio and answer some questions. It can be either typing or dragging the answers.
The video above me is an assignment where you go to Aplicar and go to slide 2 where we had to listen to these audios and select an answer that is describing what is being said. It was sort of difficult to hear some of these audios due to it not being as clear and sometimes I do not understand what is being said. The way I find it easy for me is to figure out the key word that is being said that I know and it helps me out. As I am listening to it, my takeaway is that it can be relieving because there are times where I feel like I can understand what is being said. I have grown from these activities due doing all the assignments that have been given to me and learning as I am doing them.
Interpretive Reading
The only thing I have read throughout the semester is this website called Lingro Learning. I have done a little bit of reading for some discussion board but I did not really do much of learning on it but I have for this website. https://lingrolearning.com/courses/contrasena/. It is a website that teaches you all sorts of the contents to Spanish. We would get multiple slides to do each week that is related to Spanish it would teach you how to pronounce the word how to make it into sentences and other incredible things. Then we would have to do assignments that is either dragging, typing, or selecting for answers.
The link above me is one of my good assignments that I have done well in. It was all about the human body and what parts are what. Reading the questions can be difficult at times because I do not know all of the words. I over come these challenges by figuring out what I do not understand when reading. I do like that there are multiple tries on these assignments. I really enjoy learning from this site because I feel like I have improved my Spanish but, not by much but will want to continue into doing so. What I found interesting is that there are multiple ways to write the answer with the same meaning and saying those words as well. I continue to be better at these assignments my overall grade for the website has gotten better from Spanish 101.