Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication
Exploring Culture
During the Hispanic Heritage Month, we identified certain places Latin American countries and learned about foods from Hispanic countries as well. Also, on the Contrasena study program we learned about and compared our university with the universities in Hispanic countries. Such as the difference of staying in the dorms versus living off-campus.
Adobe-Scan-Dec-6-2022-4Engaging in Communities
It is important to try to positively impact your community because it not only helps those that are in need, but also gives you purpose and a sense of fulfilment. I tried to help my community by being a firefighter, and my limited knowledge of Spanish was helpful in that, but now that I know much more I will be of more use to my community.
Interpersonal Communication
One particularly helpful assignment I did in the Contrasena program was identifying and placing formal and informal greetings and endings on letters, emails, and texts. This will be very useful when I am speaking Spanish as to not seem disrespectful when talking to superiors.
Adobe-Scan-Dec-6-2022-1Presentational Speaking
Another fun project was the video explaining some of my favorite and frequently used places around campus. It was difficult because there were many words that we had not learned yet in the curriculum yet that I wanted to use in the video, and we had to mainly use the words we had learned here. But I felt comfortable with narrating the information and I think my accent in the video would be understandable to most Spanish speakers.
Presentational Writing
Most of these written assignments were fairly easy because we would usually answer questions that already contained a verb that we would just need to conjugate differently. The projects ranged from answering questions from a given passage to composing a written schedule. Another difficulty is remembering where to place the accents over the letters as most of the time they sound the same.
Adobe-Scan-Dec-6-2022Interpretive Listening
We did some interpretative listening assignments in Contrasena where they would post a conversation between two people, and we would decipher what the context was and answer specific questions about what they were discussing. Another way I did this was by watching the Netflix show “Bolivar”. I alternate between playing English and Spanish subtitles while I have the Spanish audio, so I become more familiar with the words and spelling.
Adobe-Scan-Dec-6-2022-2Interpretive Reading
In this class we had some assignments where we would have an email, letter, or paragraph that we would answer questions from. This was good practice and builds familiarity with reading texts that we don’t know all the words for. And now that I have a better understanding of Spanish, I plan to start reading books in Spanish.
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