Exploring Culture
I think one of the things that I was able to truly enjoy doing the class was slowly being able to pick up on the culture by picking up bits and pieces of conversations that I would watch either in person or on youtube. Coming from a household that did not have a lot of celebrations outside the traditional Christian holidays it was really cool to see how people from other backgrounds celebrated, especially with life and death. My upbringing saw it as a end and a step forward that was clouded in grief where as Spanish culture celebrates and embraces the move from life to the afterlife
Engaging in Communities
As an American it was not standard to learn another language. Yet almost every other country in the world pushes their citizens to learn if not one more but many more foreign languages. I believe that it should be everyone’s duty to be able to effectively communicate with those around each other. By starting to build a larger Spanish background and vocabulary I have had the opportunity to start small conversations with neighbors and friends.
Interpersonal Communication
The semester presented the opportunity to present and share with my classmates and teachers the growth that I have had. Though I have had a lot of hardships I truly have been trying to achieve to the best of my abilities a larger understanding a background. In the beginning I really excelled with taking apart multiple parts of speech during a conversation and being able to work towards better understanding what is trying to be communicated to me. I also made sure to take the opportunity to ask the speaker to slow down and even rephrase what was said.
Presentational Speaking
Presentation in English is hard enough as it is, stage fright was my biggest factor that was holding me back during a lot of my presentations in Spanish. One of the things that I found to help was to try and practice over and over again with what I want to say. Though not extremely practical in the real work I was able to work towards being more confident and fluent in some of my vocabulary. Attached is my most recent conversation in which I practices A LOT to be able to be as confident as I was. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yL-fbNLQy45soImU21uMnYlNsjfdMMY5/view?usp=sharing Going forward in my next Spanish class I want to try and be more spontaneous in my presentation and show myself failing so I can work towards smooth conversation and communication between individuals. Here is another link of my personal presentation https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e0PMgnEn8Oxlf0rcxaHkyRmjhsziPVie/view?usp=sharing
Presentational Writing
There were a few opportunities for me to present my writing within the course, most of which came in Lingo learning. Like my presentations a lot of my downfalls come from not having the confidence to make mistakes.
Projecto
Interpretive Listening
Lingo learning created a lot of opportunity to listen to fast pace conversations. Then the application would ask me to answer questions both in English and Spanish about what the conversation was about and key factors that was inside of it. One of the reoccurring issues that I found was the grammatical differences which already follow me closely with the English language but I know the more I work on it the better I will be able communicate
Interpretive Reading
One of the concepts that come a little easy for me is the ability to read and decipher Spanish writing and reading. By using context clues and looking at how the sentence was structured i could decipher the idea behind the reading.