Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Through the semester I was shown a variety of cultural practices that my own culture does not have. It included various greeting methods, differences in personal space and acceptable social interactions, festivals, and customs among other things. Through continual exposure, I have been able to gain a better understanding and appreciation of all of the things listed above.

Values and attitudes in Hispanic culture are quite different from values and attitudes in my own culture. At first, it was hard for me to understand because I am very used to my own culture and have little exposure to other cultures on a day-to-day basis. Even though I did not understand, I wanted to. The more I learned about these cultures, the more I understood and appreciated them. Rather than challenging my worldview, I would say it merely enriched my current one by giving me more angles through which I can view the world.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging in various communities is a valuable and mind-opening practice. Through learning from other communities and cultures, one can enhance one’s own life. Learning from different people and cultures leads to great fulfillment and open-mindedness.

Through my–albeit brief and limited–experience with learning from various Hispanic and Spanish cultures, I have learned of customs and ways of life that I never would have known otherwise.

As just one example, La Tomatina is a festival I wrote a discussion board assignment for, chosen because it is so wildly different from the festivals celebrated in America and I wanted to know more about it. Although it is internationally known and has inspired quite a few international versions, I hadn’t heard of it before and I might never have had I not learned more about Spain.

Interpersonal Communication

This semester, I completed a variety of oral/audio activities, discussion boards, etc. I completed partnered activities where another student and I would act out a conversation solely in Spanish and had several other individual oral/audio activities including quizzes and individual projects. Discussion boards were completed with a mixture of Spanish and English.

Through these assignments, I have grown a lot. Discussion boards gave me the opportunity to attempt longer writings in Spanish and for feedback from my peers. I have grown considerably with the oral assignments in particular. Speaking Spanish was difficult for me at first; I was unused to speaking it and it is difficult and discouraging to try and speak a language you barely have any words for. I overcame this gradually and am still overcoming it as I learn. The more I spoke and the more I added to my vocabulary, the easier and more fluid it got.

As for things I excelled in, I performed well in discussion boards and other writing assignments. I spent a fair bit of time memorizing the grammar and vocabulary given to us, and along with writing a new language being easier than speaking it, these assignments came easier to me. If I were to do any of the above differently, I would spend much more time practicing speaking out loud. It would help me memorize better and let the language flow more fluidly whether it be speaking, writing, or even thinking in it.

Presentational Speaking

For one of the assigned projects, we were tasked to show some of the various places we frequent, describe what we do there, and also describe what we like to do there. It is so far one of the longest monologues I have performed in Spanish without assistance.

The most challenging part of the presentations was speaking out loud and remembering the script. We were not allowed notes for the recordings and so I had to memorize a script and recite it as naturally as possible. The project above was the most difficult for me in that aspect because I was not answering to a partner so I did not have anything to prompt me nor the time to think between statements. Through practice, I was able to do it but in the future, I will speak more Spanish outside of oral assignments to hopefully become better at future presentations such as these.

Presentational Writing

During the semester we did various kinds of writing including presentational writing. I have written several pieces of presentational writing including a nomination letter and a weekly schedule with a paragraph explaining said schedule.

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My vocabulary is currently very limited so the most challenging aspect of the writing I did was finding the right words to express myself. In time, as I learned new words, writing became easier for me because I could describe things and express myself more easily and naturally. Writing comes easier to me, so when I started learning new words I also started excelling at presentational writing. Next time, I could stand to learn more words; my vocabulary is still harshly limited and I still do not know the Spanish names for many things. A wider vocabulary would make my future writings better and easier to do.

Interpretive Listening

A good portion of our learning assignments and quizzes involved identifying information from a recording or video of someone speaking Spanish. Sometimes it was merely identifying what words or tenses were used, but sometimes we would need to interpret a recording deeper to answer more complex questions about it.

The above is a video converted to audio because what we paid attention to was not the video itself but what the actors were saying. It comes from the LingroLearning course we were enrolled in for the semester, specifically from Span101, Unit 2, Contraseña: Texto. Identifying information was difficult because I had to listen to the whole of the audio to try and understand the meaning. Listening was difficult and I had to listen to it several times before I clearly understood. Despite this, it was a very compelling feeling to listen to another language and clearly understand it. After the listening activities, I started exposing myself to spoken Spanish more in media to get used to hearing and understanding it. I realized that the longer I avoid actively exposing myself to Spanish media, the more difficult it will be to use Spanish myself because even if I speak it, it is no use when I cannot understand anyone else.

Interpretive Reading

In class, I read a variety of short Spanish readings which I then had to interpret the meaning of and use to help subsequent activities. Outside of class, I tried to read news articles written in Spanish and understand them on my own. One of the in-class readings is below.

Readings would sometimes use words and conjugations I do not know yet. Interpreting the readings accurately and clearly made me rely on the surrounding context with words and conjugations that I know in order to figure out the rest of the meaning. Context helped me greatly. For example, the above is a formal nomination letter of which I know a good portion of the words already, and knowing this helped me interpret it because I knew what kind of words they would be. It was fascinating to read and understand that much of another language. The above comes from the LingroLearning course we were enrolled in, Span101, and specifically is from Unit 5, Estrategia de comprensión: Leer. Although my reading comprehension has since grown greatly, the difficulty I experienced with assignments like these proves my need to further expose myself to Spanish.