Exploring Culture
Learning about El Mercado Al Aire Libre helped me to understand that in Hispanic culture open markets are much more popular that in the U.S and it is often a way most people in cities do their shopping for food, clothing, etc.
Throughout Spanish 102 I felt I was actually able to learn a lot about Hispanic culture, more than I learned in my 101 class. Talk Abroad in some way helped me learn some about Hispanic culture. However, the “Cultura” assignments that we completed in Supersite overall helped me learn the most about Hispanic culture as a whole. Learning about the Open Air Market showed me that these exist all throughout Hispanic culture and it is not something that you often find in the us. I think it is something that is very interesting to learn about. Another thing that Cultura focused on was food in Hispanic culture. I was able to find out that there are a lot of Hispanic food places that exist in very popular U.S cities. This helped change my view because while I knew that there was a presence of Hispanic food in the U.S, I did not realize how large the presence actually was. This also changed my view that it isn’t just regular old tacos that Hispanic culture brought here. The culture that has come to the U.S is interesting and exciting to learn about.
Engaging in Communities
Engaging in your immediate community is important because it helps build relationships with other members of the community which can then help to bridge gaps between the different types of people in these communities. Engaging in your immediate community can in turn help the global community come together because when one community has a good relationship they can then come together with other communities.
I have been heavily involved in the community for a majority of my life. Recently, I have been involved in being an instructor at the Salem High School Leadership Workshop which is a weekend program that teaches high school kids effective leadership skills for both school and the community. I was also involved in SCA which hosted events like the canned food drive which went out into the community to collect items for the food bank. Experiences like these have allowed me to build relationships with an align with people who are both similar and different than me. This also has allowed me to learn skills that I can take with me all through my life.
Interpersonal Communication
Throughout the semester we have done a variety of interpersonal communication in each of the modules. We listened to audios on Supersite, participated in TalkAbroad conversations, and completed discussion boards. These all helped us have experience with both listening and speaking Spanish.
Interpersonal communication activities we did included TalkAbroad conversations, Zoom/Supersite interviews, and discussion boards. TalkAbroad conversations were activities that helped us get real-time speaking experience with native Spanish speakers. Over the two conversations we completed I felt I was much better able to communicate. The second time I was able to have conversations, form questions, and respond to questions much easier. One difficult part of this activity was that I tend to crack under pressure when talking to someone new. It was especially difficult for me because I knew the person on the other side of the conversation was very fluent in the language. Discussion Board posts allowed us to analyze visuals and then make a description. We also got to respond to other classmates which also helped to facilitate conversation. I excelled at this activity because I was easily able to form sentences based on what I saw in this picture. My favorite of these activities was our interviews via zoom and supersite. These were helpful because we did them often so I very quickly lost that fear of talking to someone new. These activities significantly helped me grow and become more comfortable with the conversation aspect of the class. The only thing I would do differently next time is not be so worried about what the other person is thinking and just let the conversation flow in my head.
Presentational Speaking
When it comes to presentation speaking we can look at the cooking video assignment we did. This allowed us to use the vocabulary we were learning and put it together in sentences. This was a useful activity because it had to do with the unit we were in and allowed us to learn how to form sentences and talk for longer periods of time on our own.
Presentational speaking was an activity that allowed me to be able to talk on my own for a longer period of time. The challenging part of this activity specifically was trying to find information so that I could make a long enough video. I overcame this by going through the entire chapter of the textbook so that I could find enough information that would pertain to this activity. One thing I excelled at was my recording. Once I was able to get what I needed to say it was very easy for me to record and get into the video. It was actually fun for me to record. Next time I think I would prepare the same way because I am very happy with the results I got.
Presentational Writing
For presentational writing we completed activities called compositions. These were writings that were about 10 sentences long and it was usually based off of the unit we were working on. These helped us tie in all of the things we learned throughout a unit and put it all together.
For presentation writing there were multiple compositions throughout the semester. Each of these activities was a good learning experience because it allowed us to use all of the skills we had learned. We were able to do verb conjugation, sentence structure, vocabulary, and more. The difficulty in this activity was trying to make sure I was doing verb conjugation correctly. However, after using the helpful videos we were given and using my textbook resources I was successfully able to complete the activity. I think that each time my compositions ended up going well and that I prepared to the best of my ability.
Interpretive Listening
We used interpretive listening during things like Supersite activities. These helped us work on our listening skills and then made us put them to use by having us answer the questions to follow. This was a good test of seeing if we knew our vocabulary and if we can recognize it.
The interpretive listening activities were especially difficult for me because I found it hard to gather what the speakers were saying during conversations. The people speaking are fluent in speaking this language so it makes it a bit hard to understand when they go especially fast. I overcame this challenge by listening multiple times and only trying to answer one or two questions at a time. I was able to take away from this listening experience techniques on how I can break a conversation down to be able to understand it better. I think each time we did this I was able to understand more and more and better able to answer the questions.
Interpretive Reading
Throughout the semester we read many different articles in Supersite. These articles were apart of the Cultura section and they always included follow-up questions to test us on the material that we read.
The interpretative reading activities were definitely at the bottom of my list when it came to favorite activities. However, I was able to learn more about Spanish culture from these activities. During these activities I had trouble reading because there were a lot of words that I was not familiar with. I overcame this by taking it one sentence at a time. One interesting thing about these articles was that they included a lot of material about the culture that I was not at all aware of. Learning all of this was definitely a growing moment for me during the semester because it allowed me to get rid of the opinions I had and actually learn concrete information about Spanish culture.