Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Instructions

Exploring Culture

I chose a country to study their lifestyle. The country I chose was Puerto Rico. The first thing I looked at was what was the normal amount of hours they worked in a day. The typical work hours for them were 8 hours a day. I also looked into if it was a common cultural practice there to take a nap. It is, a lot of people in Puerto Rico take rest hour. Regardless of if it is sleep or not it is common to take one hour off around lunch time to recoup. The last big thing I learned was it is common in Puerto Rico to eat dinner later than people eat in America. Normal dinner time in Puerto Rico is from 7-10pm at night.

Learning the difference in the practices helped me realize how different other cultures can be. From the 8 hour work days, making time for an hour of rest a day, and utilizing night time for dinner led me to better my understanding of Spanish cultures. While Spanish cultures consist of people working hard they still prioritize mental health. The one hour of rest between busy work is really important, I believe it should be implemented in American Culture. It would allow people to have a brain break and help improve work habits because it will help prevent people from getting tired or lazy. Something I never realized was that it is not common in colleges in Spanish countries to have a lot of dorms for their students on campus. A lot of the time students there commute. The misconception I had about Spanish culture was that their lifestyle was near the same as the U.S. however I now know how I was very wrong.

Engaging in Communities

It is important in my immediate community to go to college, work, and become successful. In my global community it is important to have friends and enjoy life.

Attached is my weekly schedule. In it you can see my dedication to the immediate and global community values. I go to college, my work is being a college athlete because it pays for my college, and I am studying and working hard to become successful. I also still make time to see my friends and have fun. While I am busy with my participation in these communities I also manage to maintain a balanced lifestyle.

Interpersonal Communication

This year we did a lot of interpersonal oral activities. One thing we did was Oral tests. This is where I had to have a conversation and answer questions from my teacher in person. Another thing we did was discussion posts. We did these a lot in class talking about different subjects and for projects. In my opinion the biggest interpersonal communication assignment we did was our project where we interviewed a Spanish speaker.

In class we would have to do assignments with our classmates. This consisted of us talking to them and asking them questions in Spanish. It was extremely helpful because I was able to use what I was learning and put them into real life conversations. In the discussion posts we would analyze our classmates projects and comment what we thought back to them in Spanish. This really helped learning what words are best in Spanish when it comes to talking to your friends in small conversations. With the oral tests we do I learned a lot on how to formulate Spanish sentences in my head. At first it was very hard but each oral I got better at creating sentences and finding the words for what I want to say. I believe I excelled in the video attached below where I interviewed my friend. This project made a lot of things click for me and it made me feel more comfortable talking in Spanish. From now on I am going to try to talk more in Spanish with my friends to help with my Spanish speaking.

Presentational Writing

For the presentational writing I used a sample I submitted that informs people what activities I do in a day.

We did a lot of presentational writing this year. They were either through discussion posts or for projects. The presentational writing was used when we wanted to inform people about certain topics, our life, or certain facts. I was really good at these tasks because I am good at describing things in writing. Next time I will try to go more specific into what I am doing. I enjoyed the presentational writing tasks because it helped me formulate better Spanish sentences.

Example:

Mi semana está muy ocupada porque soy una estudiante atleta. No tengo tiempo libre. El lunes, miércoles, y viernes voy a la práctica de remo. Tengo que practicar de siete a nueve de la mañana y de dos a cinco de tarde. También tomo tres clases y tareas que hacer. El martes y jueves tengo que ir a pesas después de a práctica. Siempre estoy tan cansada. El sábado y el domingo voy a dormir la siesta en mi tiempo. Más tarde salgo con mis amigas. Ellas son muy divertidas. 

Presentational Speaking

For the presentational speaking aspect of Spanish, we did a project explaining our favorite places on campus. In the video we explained why and showed pictures of the places.

This assignment helped me grow and better my understanding with the Spanish language. I learned how to use descriptive details to describe places. It also helped me talk about the things I like better. Talking about the places was difficult at first but when I studied everything it got easier. Next time I will challenge myself to use a bigger vocabulary and talk about the places I like for a longer amount of time.

Interpretive Listening

This semester we completed interpretive listening assignments on lingo learning. We would have to listen to an audio and talk back, answer questions or responding to the audio. Attached is an audio from a unit where we worked on our comprehensive listening skills.

This semester I listened to a lot of different audios. Some audios taught us how to pronounce certain words or letters. These were extremely helpful. Some audios were someone speaking and we had to try to understand what they were saying. Personally I struggled with this a little but the more I kept practicing it the better I got at it. There were also videos we had to watch between people interacting and speaking Spanish. These were really cool and I found them the most interesting.

Lord, Gillian, and Amy Rossomondo. “Spring 2023 SPAN 101F CRN 24885.” Lingolearning, Junction, 2022, hub.lingrolearning.com/#/63a9cbabd62d554378dd1be4. Accessed 23 Apr. 2023.

Interpretive Reading

This semester we completed interpretive reading assignments on lingo learning. We would have to read a paragraph, article, or texts and responded/ answer questions on it. Attached is an example of texts we had to interpret.

Trying to interpretive the texts were a lot of fun. At first it was a little confusing but it all started to make sense when I got a better understanding of the context. I really like analyzing how friends talk. We also had to interpret paragraphs. These paragraphs ranged in size and at first it was heard to understand what they were saying but it got so much easier to read the more and more I had to do it. I am now a lot better at understanding Spanish texts or readings.

Lord, Gillian, and Amy Rossomondo. “Spring 2023 SPAN 101F CRN 24885.” Lingolearning, Junction, 2022, hub.lingrolearning.com/#/63a9cbabd62d554378dd1be4. Accessed 23 Apr. 2023.