Exploring Culture

Throughout Spanish 101, there have been many assignments that involve learning the practices and unique cultures in different spanish speaking countries. While completing these assignments, I was able to learn more about the cultural practices and differences of these countries in order to build a deeper understanding of the cultural influences throughout Latin America and Spain. For example, we had a discussion assignment named “Los días, los meses y las estaciones” in which we learned of the different celebrations held in Spain throughout the year by watching an informational video and compared them to American holidays.

This assignment, along with many others, taught me the cultural influence of religion in Spain and how important it is to many of the citizens. The people of the country came together on these holidays in much larger ways than I’ve seen in America, showing the country’s oneness and value of being with those they care about. It opened my eyes to how monetized holidays are in America by large companies, creating holidays such as black friday in order to boost sales for Christmas, while in Spain the country focused more on the religious and historical aspects of holidays and took to the streets to celebrate with the people in their cities.

Engaging in Communities

It is very important to engage in both one’s immediate community as well as the global community in order to create unity and understanding between cultures. Those who are more exposed to other cultures and other ways of life will most likely be able to build a large network of friends from all walks of life, allowing them to broaden their horizons and become more understanding of those who are different from themselves.

Personally, I grew up in a very culturally diverse area in Maryland, with my neighbors being from many different countries. This allowed me to see various different ways of life and cultural practices at a very young age, and exposed me to many different religions. Personally, I feel this made me a better, less judgmental person in the long run as I have seen and cared for many people who are different from myself. I also have many family members and friends who are from different countries, such as my sister in law from El Salvador and my friend from the Philippines, which helped to expose me to different cultures as well.

Interpersonal Communication

This semester, I was able to use flipgrid in order to both listen to my classmates speak in spanish to describe themselves and those they care about, and speak about myself and those I care about. I also partook in discussion posts in which I could write my responses in spanish and read others’ responses. With both of these, I was able to give and receive feedback to and from classmates in order to gain a better understanding of them and hear their opinions on my responses.

Through flipgrid, I was able to meet and get to know my classmates, learning about them and their lives. For these assignments, we could not use any prompts to read off of while speaking in spanish. This helped me to become more confident in my speaking skills, describing myself as best as I could and talking about myself and those I know. This also helped me to better understand correct sentence and speaking structure, which for me is the most difficult part of speaking spanish as it differs entirely from english. The class discussion assignments helped me to grow in my writing skills, translating my english thoughts into spanish on paper and helping me to learn the correct uses of accent marks used for spanish letters.Both of these assignments, though, helped me to learn more about my classmates and engage with them despite this being a fully online class.

Outside of class, I was able to use my spanish skills that I have learned at my job to better communicate with spanish speaking customers. At my job, nobody else speaks any spanish, so my little bits of knowledge were able to make it easier for both my coworkers and the customers, allowing us to be able to provide service and giving me a real life application of my knowledge. Through this, though, I learned that I sometimes have difficulty remembering the correct conjugations of words when I am speaking rather than writing, which is something I need to focus more on when studying.

Presentational Speaking

In English, give a brief 2-3-line description of any presentational speaking activities you completed this semester inside or outside of class for or related to your Spanish learning. Include a recording of one of these speaking activities. (See Modes of Communication link for description and examples). 

Then, in a paragraph, write a reflection that includes each presentation you completed in which you explain what challenged you and how you grew and overcame those challenges.  What did you excel at? What/how would you do differently next time? 

Presentational Writing

Throughout this course, I was given assignments in which I had to research different subjects and write descriptions of them on Lingrohub, such as “Exploración 4-4 Búsqueda en internet”. In this assignment I had to search for universities in spanish speaking countries and compare them to ODU in order to build my understanding of the similarities and differences between universities here and abroad in spanish speaking countries. I also completed discussion assignments in which I had to write spanish responses to prompts, such as “Mi Persona Favorita”.

These assignments helped me to better translate my english thoughts into spanish writing, helping me to build an understanding of sentence structure and verb conjugation, which is something I struggle with. I feel that I excelled in using adjectives and descriptive language in order to accurately convey my thoughts, and over time remembering the descriptive words I was using became easier, as did the use of accent marks throughout my sentences. I feel that I can do better with conjugation and continue to memorize each appropriate verb ending.

https://canvas.odu.edu/courses/3065/discussion_topics/312004?module_item_id=2658207

Below is my response to the discussion prompt “Mi Persona Favorita”

Interpretive Listening

Many activities and quizzes in this course required listening to others speak in spanish and both identifyoing and expanding on what they said. Many of the activities on Lingrohub required you to listen to spanish conversations and describe the information shared within those conversations in order to gain a better understanding of vocabulary and build listening skills in spanish.

Throughout this semester, I listened to telephone conversations, campus tours, general vocabulary, and basic sentences on Lingrohub. These assignments helped me learn to listen and identify key words and phrases throughout spanish conversations in order to understand the premise of the conversations and answer the questions being asked.

Below is a prompt given by Lingrohub on the assignment “Aplicar Gramatica 2”, one of the many assignments that required interpretive listening:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b9yXzSQ6g__TmJj4fNqChixcI9pO6cJ1/view?usp=sharing

Interpretive Reading

Almost every assignment on Lingrohub in this course required interpretive reading, whether it be in the form of true or false questions regarding a statement, or asking where you think the items within a classroom would be. The assignment “Comprabar Gramatica 2” Is a perfect example of this, as it has you read an email and identify whether the the gender agreement used in specific sentences based on the nouns and adjectives.

Personally, what was challenging for me about these assignments was the use of gender agreements for objects or ideas that don’t necessarily have a gender in english, such as the word food, or “Comida” being feminine. Through these assignments, though, I have learned how to identify gender agreements and have begun to memorize the genders of nouns and how to use adjectives in conjunction with the noun’s gender.