Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication
Exploring Culture
Through my travels to different countries I enjoyed experiencing other cultures. This has helped me provide different perspectives in which other countries live. It is important to understand cultural perspectives in order to keep from offending or being disrespectful. Through interactions and self awareness it helped me gain general understandings of the cultures in which I found myself.
One thing I am aware of is that you cannot force political or personal views on a culture, every culture is structured differently and have their very own beliefs. In order to better understand you have to put away personal bias and absorb any amount of knowledge and information about the culture. Having an open-mind has helped me throughout all my experiences in different cultures, along with the willingness to learn and accept that I am a guest in a host country.
Engaging in Communities
It is important to actively engage and bring self-awareness and understanding of your community in order to create ways that will positively effect not only your community but other communities around.
One of my most humblest reflections comes from a deployment in Afghanistan. While out on a patrol we lived in a village amongst the people. A very poor country, I always made it my responsibility to interact with the village children whether we played games or I provided them food and drinks. It would always made me feel good to see the smiles on their faces even, though there was so much conflict around them. Moments like these are ones that I will forever cherish.
Interpersonal Communication
The whole class was built around interpersonal communication whether it was through weekly discussion boards, interaction in the classroom or homework assignments. What better way to learn and understand a foreign language than by communicating.
Discussion boards was a great way for us to grow during the class. Each week I had found that my vocabulary and comprehension grew stronger. At first it was difficult to formulate complete sentences, as I often would only write short phrases. The more that I would communicate in class and through the interactive homework I noticed it became easier to understand what was being said. I feel like I excelled more at the listening portions during class by listening to key words and conjugations it helped me to interpret what was being said. Actively working in breakout rooms everyday really helped me get comfortable with my communication skills since we were forced to talk with each other, it also allows us students a chance to help one another if we had any short falls. Next time I would probably ask more questions in class especially if I find myself struggling to understand something.
Presentational Speaking
During class we would be put into breakout groups amongst classmates and we would take turns asking questions and answering them in Spanish. Other ways included were our interviews with both the instructor and a classmate. I found this to be an important part of class because it is important to learn proper grammar and annunciations of words to formulate complete sentences.
The peer-to-peer interview was a great introduction into the language since it primarily consisted of normal greetings and basic conversation. The only problem during the interview was not knowing if we were correctly answering the questions. At times I find myself wanting to add unnecessary words to my sentences. Next time I would make sure to ask more questions in order to fully understand. I feel that my interview with the instructor was better and I felt more comfortable where in the beginning of the semester I was very nervous.
Presentational Writing
During class we were asked to write two compositions to gage our overall written comprehension of Spanish. These assignments provided good insight in what we did well and what we need to work on.
I really enjoyed this assignment because it gives you the understanding of how to formulate sentences in the language. I often found it to be difficult with sentence structures and formulating complete sentences. The feedback received helped me understand how I could improve my writing and made it easier for me overcome my deficiencies. I found it easier to conjugate words properly through each writing assignment and through repetition during homework assignments. I think that I could do better if I would spend a little more time on studying the sentence structures and applying it to my writing.
Interpretive Listening
During each chapter we had “Competencia Cultural” assignment due. These assignments were video interpretive listening assignments that had questions based off the conversations in the videos. It was a great way to listen at real speed a normal conversation in the language and required keen listening in order for translation. Below is an example video from class in which we were required to answer questions.
I found the assignment to be very useful yet difficult at the same time. It was useful because it requires keen active listening skills in order to understand and answer the questions. The difficult part for me was as a beginner it required me to listen to the conversation over and over in order to understand enough to answer the questions. The more comfortable I got in each lesson I realized that I didn’t need to lesson to each video over and over to understand. I also found the tutorials useful to provide extra instructional guidance on what was covered in class during that lesson. My biggest take away from the listening experience was in order to fully comprehend you have to actively listen closely because you can miss one or two words and misinterpret a whole sentence.
Interpretive Reading
Our interpretive Reading came in the form of our “Lectura” assignments along with instructional guidance from the instructor whether it be examples from our book or in the form of a “Kahoot” quiz. Below is an example of Lesson 3 Lectura assignment.
I often struggled with word knowledge when it came to reading I always had to go look up words to understand what was being said. The more reading and word study I had to do the more I noticed my vocabulary increasing. My takeaway from each reading was that you have to pay attention closely when it comes to word conjugations and correct punctuation because that can throw off a sentence and not make any sense. I think repetition plays a huge part in learn and understanding the language. Without taking the time to read and constantly study up on words and sentence structures it would be hard to complete the course.