SPAN 102

Exploring Culture

While taking this class I have noticed that during the semester not only did the textbook help me when it came to gaining knowledge VHL learning also played a huge part. VHL allowed to me to prepare for quizzes and assignments by letting me practice by giving me multiple attempts to understand what I got wrong. I would recommend this to anyone that is new in the foreign language world. When I first entered this Spanish course I was nervous because I didn’t know what to expect, but I can honestly say that with these resources my growth and understating of the material has increased tremendously.

These products challenged my way of thinking. When it comes to learning different cultures there is so much to learn. For example I learned that the week start on a Monday in Spain where as where I live we start our week on a Sunday. One can only learn so much but you can never learn it all because that is just how broad the Spanish culture is. This helped me to see the culture for what it really is. I learned that learning Spanish is not easy but if you put your mind to it anything can be accomplished. I boxed this language up and put it in a stereotype at first thinking that it was almost impossible to learn, but quite frankly I was able to prove myself wrong and I am very proud of that.

Engaging in Communities

The value of engaging in your community is very important. It opens your mind to new ways of thinking! It is a great honor that I was granted the opportunity to even begin learning another language because not many people have this advantage. This opens doors for me on so many levels, more than I can even imagine. I remember in class our teacher assigned us an assignment to be completed on VHL and the assignment focused on the culture of Spain, learning about this alone is engaging in different communities whether one realizes it or not.

Interpersonal Communication

This semester I had the privilege to complete discussion boards. This is something that was assigned by our professor in Spanish 102 to critically test our knowledge. Some were very challenging and others not so much but it allowed my learning to increase in many different ways. I would say that my biggest challenge was always retaining the correct form of punctuation. Although this was something that I had to work on I got better with it over time. I excelled in my vocabulary and I was able to do so by studying the material given. Next time to overcome struggles I will try to use a different method when it comes to remembering certain punctuation.

Presentational Speaking

Presentational speaking was exercised by what we like to call “Oral Interviews”. This is when the professed sends out an email giving each student a time and we meet over zoom. Once on a zoom call she asks us a few questions and we would cooperate by answering her questions in Spanish. We would get graded on this after completion which is called participation in the grade book.

I grew a lot from this act of teaching because it’s one thing to write discussion boards and complete assignments but its another to actually verbally communicate. I struggled with my pronouns most of the time but like anything else it became easier later on down the semester. I overcame these difficulties by taking advice from my professor and making sure that I made corrections where it was needed.

Interpretive Writing

During this course I learned so much about interpretive writing. This allowed me to work on my writing and thinking skills all in one. Some examples that we have used in class would be our compositions which required critical thinking. At first I struggled with brainstorming but over the course I advanced in this issue. I hope to learn more throughout the next level of Spanish. Professor Roy was really good when it came to giving constructive criticism and I was very thankful for that.

Interpretive Listening

Some examples of interpretive listening throughout the course would be audios that we were given through VHL. We would listen to someone speak and have to evaluate the sentence and do what was asked in the questions.

Some things were unclear because as a person learning another language you tend to rush things. So there were many times that I had to go back and replay the audio because my brain was moving faster than needed. I found the way that words correlate together in Spanish to be very interesting. The way that we would formulate our sentences is English differs in Spanish tremendously. From this experience I took away the gift of comprehension, I have grown so much within each activity and I am excited to see how far this can take me.

Example: You hear trabajadora (sample audio)

what does this mean? This means worker.

Interpretive Reading

Being that this was an online course sometimes we had to do some reading on our own inside and outside of class which taught us a form of responsibility. This taught me my way of learning, how I learn, and how much time I need to learn certain material. It played a big role when it came to time management. Once activities were completed based off our readings we were procided feedback which always gives you room for more advancement.

Sample of Interpretive Writing

-VHL spreadsheets

-Compositions

-Short essays