Exploring Culture

In some of the lectures we have discussed some of the culture and acceptable social culture in society. Kissing here in America isn’t always socially acceptable especially if you do not know someone. But sometimes in hispanic culture kissing on the cheek is acceptable and welcomed. I had a neutral view on this topic, either way it was fine to me. This culture helped me to see how warm and welcoming they are into accepting others in social situations. During COVID I wondered if this social practice was still going on but I imagine then it was only with close associates and friends.

Engaging in Communities

At ODU I am a College of Sciences Ambassador and we are responsible for helping the incoming and regular students. I am in charge of campus tours and giving the new students/ parents a tour of my amazing campus. Staying in touch with your community helps to ground you as a person because other people are going through tough times . It is important to be there for others and help out when needed. Participating in my community helps me to socialize and get more involved with others around me.

Interpersonal Communication

In the class we had a lot of interpersonal communication assignments. For example we had several Spanish interviews with our teacher and classmates. We also had two assignments where we talked to strangers around the world in Spanish. At first Talk Abroad was stressful and made me anxious to talk to others online. I knew my Spanish wasn’t the best and wanted to do good in conversation. After talking with the strangers only I realized that I knew more Spanish than I thought. I excelled at using context clues to and put sentences together by just taking my time and listening hard to the sentences. I enjoyed talking to others in their language because it really helps to connect me to others in different countries.

Presentational Speaking

In this class we participated in talking abroad. In the most recent one I had to talk with a stranger about what kind of food they liked. It made me really look into my Spanish vocabulary and help to understand what the other person was saying. Next time I would like to have a better Spanish vocabulary so that I can make better and more advanced sentences. In my past I have had a fear of public speaking but doing it in a setting such as my own home makes it so it isn’t so bad and it helped to improve my confidence!

Presentational Writing

We were tasked with doing several writing composition assignments. In these assignments we had to write in Spanish with a prompt given to us. For example, this past prompt we had to write like we were telling about activities that students enjoy in and out of school. In our learning supersite we are given lots of vocabulary to work with such as activities and lots of adjectives. I tried to remember what I learned and I used that to describe different activities such a sports, the movies, and even the pool.

An assignment such as this makes it so I challenge my Spanish vocabulary and use it to write sentences without using a resource. It surprised me because I realize I knew more than I have previously thought. Since we’re on our 3rd composition I think I have improved immensely since the first one. I can write longer and more descriptive sentences than in the beginning. With each I improve and I’m excited to see where I will be but the end of the semester.

Interpretive Listening

On our learning super-site we had tasks of listening to an excerpt and answering questions based on what we heard. This was very challenging because you had to listen to Spanish from a person who had a great accent and talked a little faster than we were use to. It challenged me to really listen to the words and try to go back into my Spanish vocabulary and find the meaning of some words. The excerpts were not something that you could listen to once. It took a lot of listening and paying a attention to grasp what the person was saying. Over time I saw myself being able to understand after listening once or twice. This activity helped me to gain more confidence in my listening ability.

Interpretive Reading

Lastly, in supersite we were tasked with reading certain articles in Spanish. One of them specifically was about the world of soccer and how important it was to people in other countries especially Spanish speaking countries. Here in the USA soccer isn’t as popular as American football so cloth of people might not be familiar wit the culture. The article stated how soccer game days are a huge part of the culture and families get together to watch it just like any other sport. I enjoyed learning about this because I did not know soccer was such a big sport to others in different countries.