Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Proyecto para la Unidad 17

As my first project in Spanish 202, we focused on topics such as stereotypes and culture. For me, I was a bit nervous with my presentation as prior Spanish classes I had taken were more written based, but Spanish 202 took me out of my shell by providing instances in projects where I would record my voice, allowing me to work on my stage fright and pronunciation skills. I did very well on the audio portion of this project, which WordPress unfortunately will not allow me to post as mp4s are not supported, but I got slightly lower on my written portion. This was a nice way in analyzing what I had done incorrectly initially as Professor Gordus provided written feedback and allowed for revisions, something that allowed me to reread my text and see what I had gotten wrong initially. While the written prompt was not presented, the audio/video portion could be considered presentational as I did have to write out information for it for the class to follow along with, something I thought was enjoyable as having a script to go off of is relieving for these kinds of assignments rather than not knowing what to base it off of.

Proyecto para la Unidad 18

I was slowly getting the hang of writing more complex paragraphs in Spanish after the revisions given to me in regards to Proyecto 17. Proyecto 18 focused on culture and personal identity, with poetry towards the Latino/a community being a main focus. While I cannot play the audio, the poem was titled as “Bilingual/Bilingüe” by Rhina Espaillat, which focused on her identity as an Afro-Latina and learning Spanish in secret as her father did not want to teach her.

TalkAbroad #1

For my first TalkAbroad of this semester, I worked with Samuel Rivas. Unfortunately, I did get docked some points as I mistakenly forgot to do the written portion, but in regards to the oral portion of TalkAbroad I did rather well. We spoke of stereotypes and different cultures, where I mentioned stereotypes about me as an Italian and spoke of some cultural issues within the world, such as racism or being ignorant. I found the practice to be very helpful in gathering my thoughts when speaking 1-on-1 with an individual in Spanish.

TalkAbroad #2

My second TalkAbroad was with Dollys, who was an excellent partner. Since I remembered to complete the written portion of this conversation, I received an A on the assignment which I was very happy to see. Taking advice from my professor and my previous partner, Samuel, I did focus a bit more on practicing prior to the conversation so as to not lose my train of thought as frequently. This proved to be effective when speaking to Dollys about favorite influencers and customs as I mostly only fumbled on pronunciation versus not remembering the word entirely. I found the digital conversations to be extremely helpful in regards to thinking in Spanish to generate responses as well as go with the flow in terms of current Spanish knowledge to keep a conversation going.

Exploring Culture

Proyecto para la Unidad 19

This written portion focused on culture as it surrounded the concept of university and what the emotions consisted of to go there. In the written portion of this project, we focused on Francisco and the emotions he was going through when starting university as, as a Mexican, he is very family-oriented and it is an important aspect of his culture. Additionally, it was interesting to see the cultural dynamics in a Latina/o household compared to a more Westernized university experience.

Unidad 21

While I did not focus on this topic in regards to culture for my project, la Unidad 21 had excellent tidbits of culture as it discussed the drink, mate, and its origins in Paraguay. Learning about a drink that is widely sold now as Yerba-mate was an interesting portion as well as learning the cultural methods in drinking it, as it seemed to have a lot of care put into the process.

Communities

Being able to have conversations with the class in the beginning of every class was a nice way to interact with one another and the professor. It also helped with retaining more information on speaking Spanish versus writing it as many individuals had different concepts/ideas to speak about in regards to weekend plans, holidays, etc.

Presentational Speaking

While I am not able to include a link to this, I spent quite some time practicing my pronunciation for proyecta para la Unidad 20, where I discussed my favorite influencer, Brittany Broski, and why. I spoke on topics such as her subscribers, global issues she spoke on, and her general content and why I enjoyed it.

Interpretive Listening

Relating back to the in person conversations we would have in the classroom, Professor Gordus also implemented a lot of 1-on-1 discussions in class where we would speak with partners in Spanish about different topics. These activities utilized numerous different listening skills as I had to listen to the questions, the responses, and respond all in Spanish, something I found delightfully challenging.

Interpretive Reading

For la unidad 24, we watched and read about a TedTALK with chef Gastón Acurio, where we listened as well as read about his restaurant. We additionally learnt more about his Peruvian cuisine as well as analyzed the menu for his restaurant, seeing how things such as prices differed from a typical Western high end restaurant. From there, we made personal assumptions based on the reading/video about what would be likely features in the restaurant, such as good wait staff.