Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

In this class, we did various activities that exposed us to other cultures such as discussion boards and projects. Since each of the topics was different, I was introduced to many aspects of Hispanic and Latino culture that I had never known before. An example of one such activity was a discussion board where we visited the website of the Spanish art museum Doña Sofia and described what we thought about the collections they had on display. Below is my post in the discussion:

Me gusta la exposición de Genealogías documentales porque me encanto historia y yo sé la historia de la foto. Es muy conmovedora Tambien me gusta la exposición de Margarita Azurdia porque es muy interesante y los colores de la escultura son gráficas y destacadas. Los azules y amarillos son divertidos de ver. Pero no me gusta la exposición de Manolo Quejido. No entiendo y tambien no me gusta mucho del arte contemporáneo o moderno.

These assignments and activities were a good way for me to broaden my already existing knowledge of Hispanic culture. Knowing topics such as Hispanic art and food, and the different lifestyles and practices of different Hispanic people, are all things I view as important knowledge because of my goal of understanding people who lead very different lives than I do. However, it made me realize how much I would still like to learn and how little I still know, not just about Hispanic culture but other cultures in general.

Engaging in Communities

Community is invaluable to the human existence. It ties us together and allows us to understand each other through shared similarities. Learning about the communities of others also allows us to discover our similarities and understand our differences. One such example of my participation in other communities was when we read a comic written in Spanish titled Finita. The text below is a project I did, meant to describe Finita’s experiences as an immigrant.

En la historia, Finita no hablaba de sus dificultades como un inmigrante. Pero probablemente Finita y su familia se mudaban a los estados unidos porque problemas de dinero o por más oportunidades. Las fotos son muy importantes para Finita porque son sus hilos para Cuba y para su padre. Como un inmigrante, Finita probablemente enfrentó muchas dificultades y especialmente sin su padre. Vivir en los estados unidos, Finita y su familia probablemente inmediatamente aprendían íngles y no usaban español con la mayoría de la gente fuera de la casa. Cuba tiene una cultura diferente de los estados unidos, por lo que también enfrentó dificultades para asimilarse. Se convertían en ciudadano aquí también es difícil y lleva mucho tiempo. En los estados unidos, Finita y su familia probablemente enfrentó problemas de dinero también porque los inmigrantes no pueden ganar dinero fácilmente a veces.

As someone who is not an immigrant and has not had a chance to visit another country (especially a country that does not speak English), there is no way I will be able to truly understand the difficulties immigrants face. However, considering the problems they may encounter and learning about them allows me to connect to the community that they share with other immigrants.

Interpersonal Communication

During the semester I completed two fifteen-minute-long TalkAbroad conversations, two oral exams, and several discussion boards where I made a post in Spanish and then replied to one or more of my peers in Spanish. The TalkAbroad conversations and discussion boards were all about different topics that we learned as part of the course material. Below are the TalkAbroads I completed.

Each of these activities has increased my communication skills, both written and spoken. I have learned much more vocabulary and was able to use it in the discussion boards and other written activities. In the TalkAbroads and oral exams I effectively and correctly used several tenses including past, present, and future, but struggled to come up with vocabulary words in the heat of the moment and often had to use hand gestures or similar but incorrect words to convey my meaning.

My main problem is a lack of vocabulary; even though I learned many more words this semester, I cannot use them very effectively because I forget them when I need to use them unprompted. My main goal is to get used to various Spanish words and their contexts so that in the future I may use them more smoothly in conversation.

Presentational Speaking

I completed several video projects over the course of the semester. One such project required me to make a three-minute video about the history of a piece of art, of which I chose Guernica by Pablo Picasso.

When I completed this project, I had some difficulties. Some of the concepts I wished to speak about were complicated, and with my limited vocabulary, it proved to be challenging. However, I was able to work around it to the best of my ability and convey what I wanted to convey. The things I excelled at most, though, were pronunciation and tenses which I put much effort into getting right.

Presentational Writing

Some of the projects I completed were written assignments. One of them was about being a fashion guide. The assignment prompted me to choose a client from a list of five people, read a prepared analysis of their style of fashion, and prepare a list of at least five items of clothing or accessories based on that. The objective of the assignment was to describe the items and explain why they were chosen, their versatility, and so on and so forth. The paragraph below is the main piece of writing I did for the project.

¡Hola, Manny! Te preparé esta guía de estilo para ti. Tu estilo es cómodo, relajado, y práctica. Esta guía incluye una camiseta blanca holgada, unos pantalones negros holgadas, los zapatos cómodos, un reloj de plata, y un sombrero marrón. La camiseta y los pantalones son versatíl, práctica, y te gusta ropa holgada. Los zapatos son cómodos y no formal. El reloj de plata es muy útil y te puedes usar para todos tus conjuntes. Finalmente, el sombrero marrón incluye porque tu vives en un lugar con un clima variado. Un sombrero es muy útil para ti. Tu estilo es muy cómodo y casual y quiero estarte cómodo en tu ropa nueva.

For this assignment, I tried to vary the sentences to make them interesting while still having them flow well. It was somewhat challenging because I made a lot of variety in how I described the items which required many different words. However, I eventually created an effective series of descriptions by fully utilizing the vocabulary in that particular unit. If I were to redo this assignment, or in the future do a similar assignment to this one, I would try to apply the audience writing skills I have to better create flow and more interesting sentence structure.

Interpretive Listening

In LingroLearning I completed several listening assignments where I identified the tenses of various sentences or had to spell words correctly with accents based on them being spoken out loud. There were also discussion boards involving interpreting spoken Spanish. As part of one of the discussion boards, we watched a video about ecotourism and then had to write about our experiences with it after learning its definition. Below is the video, my initial post, and a reply to a peer’s post.

I haven’t had the chance to practice ecotourism, but I’d like to. Si practico ecoturismo quiero ir en cualquier lugar con tirolesa. Me encanta tirolesa mucho. También quiero ir a ver la naturaleza y la cultura local y participarla.

Que bien. En el verano pasado fui en un vacacion en las montañas y monté un caballo. Fue muy divertido.

By the end of the semester, I was pleasantly surprised at how much better I became at understanding spoken Spanish. On my first viewing of the above video, I had barely any trouble understanding what the narrator spoke about. At the same time, however, it made me realize that my ease in understanding the narrator had largely to do with the fact that he spoke clearly. Of the things I took away from this class, knowing that I need to spend more time listening to Spanish stuck out.

Interpretive Reading

For much of unit 15 in LingroLearning, we interpreted the microcuento (micro story) El eclipse by Augusto Monterroso (1969). It is barely over 300 words in length and focuses on a single historical event. For the end-of-unit project, I wrote my own microcuento.

Sacagawea la heroína

Los exploradores han conocidos como Lewis y Clark que exploraron América viajaron con una mujer nativa americana conocida como Sacagawea. Sacagawea, su esposo Charbonneau y su bebé estaba en un viaje con ellos porque ella conocía los idiomas nativos americanos hidatsa y shoshone y Charbonneau conocía hidatsa y francés. Los exploradores querían hacer las paces con los nativos americanos y Sacagawea viajaba con ellos lo hizo más fácil. Menos de un mes pasó en el viaje cuando la tragedia casi golpeó. Ella, su esposo y su bebé estaban en un barco cuando había sido golpeado por el viento y casi volcó. El barco se movía rápidamente y su esposo, que conducía el barco, entró en pánico pero Sacagawea estaba tranquila y serena. Ella rápidamente reunió papeles importantes, libros, medicamentos y alimentos que se habían perdido sin ella. Ella tambien salvó a su bebé todo el tiempo. Su heroísmo fueron tan admirables que más tarde, parte del río missouri recibió su nombre.

This project was supposed to be to write a microcuento, but I found it hard to write a narrative rather than simply an account of a historical event. In addition, because I was basing it on a historical event, I had trouble finding words that would convey the right meaning. One thing I struggled with but improved while writing this microcuento was determining which of the three past tenses to use: preterite, imperfect, and past perfect. Writing this helped me develop somewhat of an understanding of when to use each and under which contexts.