Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Latinx people have faced scrutiny and prejudice longer than I have existed. I could connect with this as an African American student who has customs that they participate in with their families. Through this connection I empathize and strongly understand why the Latinx community is working to prevent the erasure of their traditions/keep them being passed down from generation to generation.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging in communities outside of your own provides opportunities for attaining knowledge about another individual’s culture and/or heritage and should be heavily encouraged to do so. A closed off mind is how prejudice and stereotypes come about: because people are uneducated about something, they dislike what they can’t understand.

Interpersonal Communication

During this course, I completed two TalkAbroads, where I communicate via teleconference with someone from a Spanish speaking country. Both partners I had for my interviews were very knowledgeable and friendly and weren’t harsh when I made grammar errors.

I have grown more comfortable with speaking in Spanish to someone else. If I were to have a redo, I wouldn’t be as nervous and self-conscious as I was when I completed my first TalkAbroad.

Presentational Writing

During some tests, we would have to write a short story utilizing vocabulary and grammar from that specific unit.

The first time I wrote in Spanish it was timed; that made me uncertain in my abilities to write a coherent sentence in Spanish. However, I still managed to put out a paragraph completely in Spanish. If I were to do the writing over again, I would make sure to check over my work more concisely to assert that everything agrees in subject and number.

Interpretive Listening

In English, give a very brief 2-3-line description of interpretive listening activities you completed this semester for or related to your Spanish learning. (See Modes of Communication link for description and examples).

In Contraseña, there were a plethora of listening activities to complete. Some of them asked you to identify certain verbs being used while others asked you to identify certain grammatical structures, such as reciprocals and reflexives.

Via Contraseña, I learned about traditional customs on maté through these interpretive listening lessons. Sometimes, the recordings didn’t make sense for me. To ameliorate that, I made sure to listen to the recordings repeatedly. If that doesn’t help, I will try to listen for key words to see if I can make an inference on what the subject is.

Interpretive Reading

For me, reading assignments were easier than spoken assignments. With reading assignments I was able to understand and make inferences with stories, short stories, etc. It also gave me the opportunity to learn/view different sentence structures and how to use them in a real world setting.

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