Overview of Learning Objectives
Exploring Culture
Learning about the hispanic culture has been a great part of my understanding Spanish. In many assignments throughout the semester, I explored cultural similarities and differences between hispanic and American culture. One particular practice that helped me better understand hispanic culture is their celebration of holidays. I learned that hispanic cultures take holidays seriously, and they love to have parades and dress in beautiful costumes. There is also a lot of music and dancing during these holidays; being able to explore holiday traditions in hispanic culture helped me gain a better understanding of their culture as a whole.
Throughout my learning experience, I discovered a few ways that hispanic culture is different, and similar, to American culture. An example is food; in the hispanic culture, they tend to incorporate more fruits and vegetables in their main meals whereas in American culture, we incorporate more meat. A good example of similarities between hispanic and American cultures is our social lives. In both American and Hispanic cultures, spending time with family is very important, and it contributes majorly into our overall happiness.
Engaging in Communities
It is incredibly important to be in touch with your community, both locally and globally. Our modern society has the wonderful technology to be able to connect online and travel to places around the world. Supporting your community is vital to improving communications, education, and relationships.
Reflect on your experience and participation in these communities. Include artifacts such as photos, audio/video clips, etc.
Interpersonal Communication
TalkAbroad is a system where a student is able to talk with a native Spanish speaker in their native country. The conversation is entirely in Spanish, and there are objectives and questions to help keep the conversation engaging. Discussion boards are helpful in practicing writing in Spanish; I was able to not only write in Spanish, but I was able to read my classmates’ Spanish writing as well.
This semester, I completed two TalkAbroad activities, each one being 15 minutes. Participating in these conversations helped me gain confidence in speaking Spanish, and helped me realize where I needed to study and practice. The first conversation was more difficult than the second one, because at that time, I was in the process of understanding the grammar rules. By the time the second conversation took place, I had a better understanding of sentence format and vocabulary, and I was able to join the conversation with more confidence than before. Overall, I excelled in my vocabulary and ability to ask questions related to the topic. If I were able to complete the TalkAbroad assignments again, I would go in with more confidence; confidence is key to shaking off nerves and better concentration and recall.
I also completed multiple discussion board posts. During these posts, I learned about holiday traditions, food, healthcare, and families in hispanic culture. With each discussion post, I had to answer questions pertaining to the specific topic, and write at least one of my sentences in Spanish. I excelled in writing in Spanish, and it was great practice to be able to read and respond to my classmates’ sentences as well.
Here is my reflection from the two TalkAbroad assignments:
Copy-of-Copia-de-SPAN-102-TalkAbroad-Workbook-ContrasenĚa_.docxPresentational Speaking
This semester, I did not complete any presentational speaking activities.
Presentational Writing
This semester, I did not complete any presentational writing activities.
Interpretive Listening
This semester, I did not complete any interpretive listening activities.
Interpretive Reading
This semester, each exam had questions based off of an article entirely written in Spanish. I read each article and answered the related questions.
I learned how to better understand written Spanish by first identifying the words in each sentence that I knew, and using context clues for words that I didn’t know to figure out what each passage was saying. The more passages I read over the course of this semester, the more skills I gained in identifying what it was saying. One thing that really helped me understand the written passages was studying the vocabulary from each module.