Reflection
Overall I can honestly say that I am still struggling with my Spanish speaking. I have trouble being more fluent with what I am trying to say and when speaking aloud to another person I sometimes can’t get my words out. Different forms of conocer and saber I am still having issues with even though I started writing them down more. I need more time than the usual person when it comes to studying and learning a new language. The Lingrolearning assignments helped a lot with the repetition of things. I would practice the assignment more than once with the hopes of it sticking in my head quicker. Writing everything down definitely helped me when it came to memorizing the words. memorization is one of my strengths but forming sentences using the right forms of words is what I struggle with most.
My strengths are more of memorization and making flashcards. It was hard to make time for it but it was needed for me to do well in the class even though I still have trouble. I started taking a lot more study time which helped and all of the different forms of studying that were provided by the professor also helped.
Artifacts
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Instructions
Exploring Culture
The product/practices that helped me understand cultural perspectives best were the assignments through Lingro Learning. I put an example assignment below this is one of many that helped me get more into the research process of Spanish-speaking countries.
Two of the countries I would use recurringly were Costa Rica and Puerto Rico. I compared the two countries and how they used different or the same verbs in their communication and how it compares to how areas in the US speak Spanish. I also asked some of my coworkers who are from Guatemala and told me about how many cultural cities there were where they lived. They explained to me how they greet one another and how females greet other females in their country. It is always very eye-opening seeing how different countries communicate and how socially different they are from what you grew up with yourself. I think a lot of people are so used to how things are in their life they see how other countries do things and they aren’t as understanding about it because it’s different from what they are used to. Like how in Costa Rica they often greet each other with kisses on the cheek.
Engaging in Communities
I believe it is very important to be able to engage in global communities. It widens your social skills and people appreciate seeing others that took the time to learn something outside of their own culture.
I don’t have any photos of me interacting in other communities but I do take time when I am working to talk to my coworkers that grew up in a different type of community than myself and they are always happy to tell me all about where they grew up.
Interpersonal Communication
An out-of-class activity that I worked on a lot for Spanish was in an App called Duolingo. Duolingo is meant to help you read, write, listen, and speak in another language. It helps with a lot of grammar and how to speak in the first, second, and third person. As well as how to speak formally towards women and men.
I would use this App for at least twenty minutes a day even on weekends. I did struggle with the spelling of some words at first because I didn’t have any reference to some of the words and they were new to me. I also had trouble remembering to make time to work on Duolingo with my other assignments for school including Spanish class. First, it has me practice some vocabulary and has pictures with it as well to help me. Then, it gives me sentences and has me put in the correct word. And has me repeat back sentences and phrases to how with my pronunciation. But overall the App really helped me with vocabulary throughout the class. A lot of the vocab that was on there we weren’t learning in class but it helped with expanding my Spanish vocabulary and how to properly pronounce certain words I was struggling with. I am going to keep using it throughout the summer to help even more because I still struggle with forming sentences sometimes.
Presentational Speaking
The speaking activities that I did were on Duolingo and within the class assignments, we did. The conversations with our partners and practicing for them kind of helped me with trying to be more fluent when saying certain words that I occasionally struggle with.
I wish I could say that I progressed with speaking in Spanish but I still struggle when it comes to doing it for school. I get pretty nervous and I instantly forget what to say. I think I am one of those people that needs a lot more practice than an average person when it comes to speaking more professionally fluent in Spanish. But the conversations still helped me get more comfortable speaking with the same partner and to get better at pronouncing words I struggle with.
Presentational Writing
The writing I did most for this class was from what the professor gave me to do. After one of our zoom meetings, she said to start writing down all of the vocab and whatever module we were learning to get more familiarized with them. Especially with the forms of Saber, Conocer, Estar, and Haber.
At first, it was difficult to get in the habit of writing all of these down because it was a little time-consuming when I had other classwork to do. But, I forced myself to put aside time because I was really struggling with forming and remembering sentences over the zoom meetings for assignments. Next time what I would do differently is start earlier by writing down my vocab to better familiarize myself with everything so that I wouldn’t struggle as much as I did this semester.
Interpretive Listening
For listening activities, I would use Duolingo for listening to words and sentences. I started watching some beginner youtube videos for Spanish. And I even watched a Spanish movie on Netflix called “The Invisible Guest”. I watched these to help with understanding Spanish when listening to it.
Watching these videos like the one above helped a lot with my vocabulary and the pronunciation of words when I first started Spanish 101. It was pretty challenging and still kind of is for watching movies in Spanish because they are more advanced them me when it comes to speaking and understanding their Spanish speaking. I found the movies interesting though because it is something I am not used to watching.
Interpretive Reading
In class underneath all of our module overviews, there is a section where there are Spanish newspapers and magazines that were available to read to help with reading in Spanish better. I look through them during each new module.
At first reading the newspapers it was very difficult because I didn’t know a lot of the words and I was trying not to look up and translate too much. I liked how consistent they were though so every module had different articles and papers to look over. I did not excel too much in understanding all of what was being talked about in the papers and articles because I am only in beginner Spanish. I think once I become more in-depth with learning Spanish over time I will become better at reading things like articles and magazines in Spanish.