Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Growing up as a non-Spanish-speaking Hispanic, this class offered me the opportunity to explore more of my culture and obtain a better understanding of the language. In addition to my personal experience as a result of SPAN 202, I was given the opportunity to immerse myself in Spanish-speaking situations in both real-life conversations by using TalkAbroad and potential scenarios by using ImmerseMe. During one of my TalkAbroad conversations, I was able to learn more about my partner that lives in the Dominican Republic and the stereotypes that take place in her country.

Being someone who has lived in the United States my whole life it’s easy to take certain things for granted that I have that people in other countries, like the Dominican Republic don’t have as easily as I do. Whenever I have the opportunity to travel to the Dominican Republic it grounds me and humbles me for the things and the lifestyle I take for granted, because the lifestyle and the way they work there are completely different and more difficult but yet they still remain so happy.

Engaging in Communities

Personally, I believe that engaging in communities outside of your own is such an important growth factor for life because it forces us as individuals to become open-minded and see life from different viewpoints. When we allow ourselves to be around other communities and cultures we are giving ourselves the opportunity to educate ourselves and the other individuals we come in contact with who are not like us.

When I travel I like to explore and experience communities that are not like mine whether that be me just trying restaurants that are only found in that local area or interacting in activities that the locals do. Another way I choose to participate in a community that looks different than the way I look is with the church I go to, at my church there are people of all different ethnic groups and backgrounds and I get to interact with all different types of people.

Below is a picture of me immersing myself in the Dominican Culture and cutting sugar cane from a sugar cane field.

Interpersonal Communication

During the duration of this semester, I had the ability to do multiple speaking activities through TalkAbroad, ImmerseMe, and through multiple conversations with my professor. These activities allowed me to gain experience and to gain confidence with speaking in Spanish whereas before I never felt comfortable or confident to speak.

By using all of these different types of communication, I had the ability to share things that were important to me and things that I enjoyed through both verbal and written communication. In terms of written communications, I had the opportunity to be a part of multiple discussion boards throughout the semester where my classmates and I were able to speak on topics we valued and share our opinions. By doing discussion boards, I was not only able to strengthen my writing skills in Spanish but also my reading skills. My conversations via TalkAbroad allowed me to immerse myself in conversations with native Spanish-speaking individuals where we communicated about things that were valued of importance to us.

Presentational Speaking

Throughout this semester, I was given multiple opportunities to create videos for my proyectos. Some of the videos pulled me out of my comfort zone, but there were also opportunities for videos on topics that came easily to me.

The video attached below presents a video that was one that I enjoyed making and came easier to me compared to other topics I did presentational speaking on. In the video below I had the opportunity to speak about my favorite influencer and got to explain why she was my favorite, and what kind of content she makes. One topic for presentational speaking that did not come to me as easily as the influencer topic, was the topic on food issues due to limited knowledge and comfort speaking on the topic in Spanish.

Presentational Writing

During my time in this class this semester, I was given multiple opportunities to expand on my reading and writing skills in Spanish. LingroLearning provided me with many opportunities throughout the semester to read stories in Spanish as well as write brief essays and short answer questions. I also had the opportunity to interact on discussion boards throughout the semester as well. Attached below is an image of presentational writing I did this semester where I wrote about a poem by Mayda deValle.

Writing in Spanish is something I still struggle with at times when it comes to conjugating the proper tense, but this semester helped strengthen my confidence to write in Spanish more. I was able to grow from the feedback I earned after each project and written assignment and now I am slowly becoming more confident with which tense to use. The project I felt I struggled with the most, was the project about Fransico Jaminez going away to college because I felt limited in what I could say due to not knowing how to translate all of my thoughts into Spanish.

Interpretive Listening

I was given multiple different outlets to practice my listening in Spanish this semester by watching FlipGrid assignments and listening to my classmate’s talk, LingroLearning videos, and many other listening-based activities we did.

The video below is about an influencer named Aarón Escuerdo who we learned about in unit 20 on LingroLearning. I enjoyed this video the most out of all the ones I encountered this semester on Lingro because it was something I have an interest in so it made it easier for me to follow along and try to understand what was being said. Even though this video was slightly easy for me to interpret and follow along, the rest of the videos were unfortunately not as easy for me to follow along with, especially the TedTalk video we saw on Lingro talking about food issues.

Interpretive Reading

This semester, LingroLearing gave me many opportunities to improve my Spanish reading skills. One of the stories I found to be the most interesting out of all the stories I read was La Mateda, where I learned about how to prepare it as well as many more interesting facts I never knew. Another story I read this semester was about a boy leaving his family for the first time and going to college.

La Mateda tells a story of how the mate is made, where it originates from, and how and when people typically drink it. I enjoyed this story because mate is something I see a lot in stores but never knew what it was, but now thanks to this reading on Lingro I was able to gain an understanding of what it is. Although I did enjoy this reading, I definitely still struggled to understand certain parts but by using context I was able to piece together what was being said.