Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Instructions

Exploring Culture

My products and practices that helped me gain an understanding of cultural perspectives was studying more about the Spanish life, and their traditions. I also took the time to look up the history of these traditions.

These helped me better understand values in the Hispanic culture as I was able to learn more about what their traditions are, as they differ from my own. I don’t have many traditions, but Hispanics have many. They even have a tradition where they sleep in the middle of the day. Hispanic schools even have time dedicated to this transition. I never really thought of a stereotype for Hispanics, as being one myself, but I never knew how many traditions we have.

Engaging in Communities

Contributing to my community will help me know more of my past, as it lets me engage with many people that relate to me in a way. The global community as a whole has many different values as they all live around the world. They have this celebration called cinco de mayo that is about celebrating the dawn of the dead. I haven’t heard of any other culture having a day like this. I have never participated in this day, but it seems like a tradition I would love to take a part in.

Interpersonal Communication

I never used TalkAbroad for my assignments as my mother and grandmother is hispanic, however talking to them in spanish for one of my projects was very surreal. We don’t speak spanish often in the house, so it was difficult to do it after so long. However I had a lot of fun doing this assignment. I also had a lot of fun doing all the writing activities I did when it came to the lingrohub assignments, say for a few.

At first I didn’t remember much Spanish. Due to not talking in the house in Spanish for a while, I forgot some basics. Taking this class however helped me remember what I have forgotten. I enjoyed speaking to classmates for our class assignments, and posting on our discussion boards about their projects. Each assignment and project we did I learned a bit of more Spanish. My main problem however was that we were moving too fast, so everything I learned couldn’t take hold before we moved on. I was able to overcome this partially by studying every day for the classes, and it has helped me remember much more.

I exceled at the beginning two units, as it was everything I remembered from speaking Spanish. However next time I will take my time to look at what I am learning, as just because I know the language a bit, doesn’t mean I can’t learn something new

Presentational Speaking

In my Spanish101 class I had a few oral presentations 1 on 1 with our teacher. There were also times I had to do a 1 on 1 with my project assignments.

Presentations for me are difficult to do in front of a whole class, so it is easier that we do our oral presentations 1 on 1. However, Spanish is quite difficult for me to speak out loud, so it will always be difficult for me. However, I will be able to talk more in Spanish in Spanish102, as it will go more into depth on the language. I would try to focus more on the speaking aspect of Spanish if I would do it differently.

Presentational Writing

In our Spanish101 class we had to provide many written projects for our class. This helped me more learn on how to write and type in Spanish, as it is easier than speaking it to other people generally. We had a project about us writing down our schedules for the week, and to provide multiple sentences about our activities.

This project helped me learn more about Spanish because I was able to look at my day to day schedule and transcribe what I do into Spanish, which will help me in the future if I ever get a coworker who can understand Spanish better than English. During the projects that were assigned to me, for example describing my university in Spanish, I learnt how to type in Spanish, which is much easier for me than speaking. One thing that was difficult was that I couldn’t remember some of the Spanish words I wanted to use. I solved this by going back to my notes from the class and looking at the vocab page, and being able to successfully find the word I forgot. I exceled at the beginning two assignments because It was just me writing about myself, and using simple phrases that I knew already.

Interpretive Listening

In my Spanish101 class, we also had many recording on Lingro that we had to listen to in order to do our daily class assignments. There was also different times that the teacher spoke to us in Spanish, and we had to figure out what she was saying so that we could understand what was going on in the class that day.

I listened to a lot of different recordings this semester about Spanish. Whether it was about our vocab, or our projects, there were countless recordings and audio records that were speaking to me in Spanish. The problem with this however is that it can easily get confusing as I am not a master at hearing and speaking Spanish. A way I solved this was by listening to the videos more than once, which helped me understand what they were saying.

Interpretive Reading

In this class, we had to research a famous person in Hispanic culture. I decided to choose Cesar Chavez. They were an active labor leader.

One thing that was challenging for me is to even find the right person to talk about. There were many different people in the Hispanic culture that was important. After that however, it was very easy to learn more about them, as there is a whole site dedicated to Cesar Chavez that has good information about him that I read about. Learning about this person helped me grow as I learnt more about Hispanic history.

History.com Editors. “Cesar Chavez.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 27 Oct. 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/mexico/cesar-chavez.