Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

By taking Spanish 101F, I have seen growth in my learning of Spanish from the start of the semester until the end. There are some strengths and weaknesses that I learned I had after completing this course. I still have much more to learn and practice in Spanish, either by talking/writing/reading Spanish or with cultural experience. 

I have been able to work on my writing skills in Spanish. It was challenging at the beginning of the semester, and I needed to refer to my notes to complete a paragraph. Now, I can successfully write paragraphs with little mistakes. You can see improvement in my writing by looking at my essays from the beginning of the semester towards the end. There is growth in my writing through an increase in the word count. 

My communication in Spanish has improved over the semester. At the beginning of the course, it was challenging to communicate in Spanish without difficulty. I got better at speaking in Spanish in the middle of the semester when we did our Unit Two Proyecto. In this project, I had to talk in Spanish and ask questions about a person’s identity and academics. This project helped me with communication in Spanish because of all the practice I had leading up to the project. I still need to work on communication in Spanish. I get nervous when talking because I am still learning, and I have to think and translate before answering questions when talking. 

Reading in Spanish is still difficult. I have to re-read paragraphs several times and pick out keywords to understand the paragraph’s main ideas. This strategy has helped me with our Exploración Cultural in the units. Now at the end of the semester, I can read in Spanish and pick out keywords to help me understand what the questions and passages are asking. 

My goals for processing in Spanish are to improve my reading comprehension and communication in Spanish. Along with pronunciation and memorization of the vocabulary and grammar.

Exploring Culture

Products and practices that helped me with an understanding of cultural perspectives were the Exploración Cultural assignments and readings from the textbook. I got to learn about many different cultures in many different Spanish-speaking countries. There are a lot of cultural differences between the United States and Spanish-speaking countries. 

The Exploration Cultural gave two different assignments: we read about the cultural differences in Spanish-speaking countries. Then we wrote about the differences between Spanish-speaking countries and the United States. By learning about these countries and then reflecting on my own, I got to learn about Spanish-speaking countries’ cultures and see how similar and different these countries are to my own. A way the countries are different is how college students live on campus in dorms in the United States, and in Spanish-speaking countries, the universities do not have dorms for students. The students either live in apartments near campus or with their families. 

Engaging in Communities

I have not participated in engaging in the community, but I plan to do so in the future. This is important because it helps with learning more about the language and culture between two different countries.

Interpersonal Communication

We did discussion boards in this course to discuss our projects with our peers. We would comment on their projects. This is an interpersonal mode. 

I have grown from the beginning semester to now by adding more details in my sentences. You can see improvement in the lengths in my comments. Reading my peer’s projects and then trying to think of what to comment on was what I found more challenging. My takeaways from this are to take my time when reading and to write comments on discussion boards.

Presentational Speaking

The presentational speaking we did in class was one-on-one interviews with our instructor. This is an interpersonal mode.

In this course, we did three interviews. These interviews were very challenging for me. I struggled with pronunciation and not remembering specific vocabulary and grammar. I overcame this struggle by practicing and reviewing vocabulary and grammar before each interview. There has been a progression between all three interviews. I have gotten better at pronunciation and remembering vocabulary and grammar. What I would do differently next time is to practice the questions and answers more before the interview.

Presentational Writing

The writing activities we did were presentational mode with one-way communication. When writing in this course, we did essays and commented on our peer’s projects. The essays were done outside of class by writing our rough drafts and in class when completing our essays. 

The essay we completed in the course are; ¿Quien yo soy?, ¿Que tengo que hacer esta semana?, and ¿A quien admiro?. Readers can see my improvement throughout the semester through the three essays. Writing in Spanish has become easier over time through expanding my grammar and vocabulary. The length of my essays can prove this from the beginning to now. The difficulties in writing in Spanish are remembering to conjugate verbs, the use of correct gender, and the use of correct punctuation. I overcame these difficulties by increasing my studying with vocabulary and grammar and practicing my writing in Spanish. A lot of the practice came from the textbook with all the assignments provided.

Interpretive Listening

The listening activities we did were Interpersonal mode with two-way communication. When listening to Spanish, we had activities in the class where we would listen to conversations and questions and then give our responses.

We did a lot of our listening in the textbook. A Lot of the listening assignments asked the students questions, and we had to record or write our responses. How fast the person would talk in the recording was very challenging. I overcome this by taking my time to re-listen to the recording and listening for keywords. My takeaways from the listening experience are to take my time when listening to a recording, re-listen if needed, and listen for keywords.

Interpretive Reading

The reading activities we did in class were Interpretive mode with one-way communication. The reading assignments were in the textbook or handouts we received in class. 

The reading activities we did were assignments in the textbook or handouts we received in class. For the textbook assignments, we had to read a passage and answer the questions about the passage. For the handouts, we read them during class, as a group, and talked about what we read. Reading was challenging because I needed to learn certain words in the reading. To overcome this challenge, I would re-read the passage and look for keywords. My takeaways from the reading are to take my time to read and understand the information from the passage.