Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Address the reflection exercises in each of the following sections. For each section, you will need to embed portions of these assignments and activities as artifacts to substantiate your reflection. Then, at the end of each section, include a link to the document or embed it as a PDF. 

Tutorials are available:

• Embedding a PDF
• Embedding Media (Images, Audio)
• Embedding a Video

Artifacts

A good artifact is a portion or clip of an assignment. It needs to be carefully selected to provide evidence/proof that supports what you are saying in your reflection.

Your reflection will help you determine what that will be. It is a quest for quality. It will represent you academically and professionally, and have personal meaning. It can be written, audio, or video.

At the end, ask yourself if the artifacts best demonstrates your abilities and growth over time.

At the end of your reflection in each section, link or embed the assignment/artifact. If the assignment has multiple pages and seems to overwhelm the section, consider adding just the first page and offering to provide the rest upon request.

Instructions

Exploring Culture

The main product that allowed me to gain a different perspective on the Spanish culture was the first Competencia Cultural with introductions and greeting one another. When watching the video, the eye-catching part for me was how no matter who it is, they will most certainly greet them with open arms, literally. For example, in the video, the men and would kiss on the cheek and the women to women and men to men would do the same to each other. What took me by surprise is how comfortable with doing so, in America people are very closed off and to themselves especially with meeting someone for the first time but I have realized that in the Spanish Culture, it is completely normal which is very unique.

The Competencia Cultural helped me see the values of both Hispanic and American because I was able to see the video and compare and contrast their lifestyle and the lifestyle I have seen my whole life. I was truly able to see that the Hispanics take pride in making sure they speak to everyone they come in contact with while Americans seem to take pride in acting as if they are above others. The video challenged the way I look at the culture in America by trying to be more friendly with people, rather than kissing on the cheek, I could just say “Hello” to someone and allow them to feel like we are friends even though we just met. Looking at the Spanish culture’s way of life and the American way of life, I could see a cause and effect cycle that was happening. For example, since the Hispanics are more open and friendly, the environment around them is more uplifting and interactive. Looking at the United States, we are not open to meeting strangers which then results in our environment being hostile and incompatible. The biggest perspective/ stereotype that has changed was being perceived as “gay” because a man who greeted a man or a woman greeted a woman kissed one another on the cheek. In their culture it is normal and it is a sign of welcome but in America, it is looked upon as a negative thing.

Engaging in Communities

I believe the importance of getting involved in my community is important because it allows me to continue to be grateful for what I have, bring different types of culture together, and allow everyone to grow within themselves. In my community and all over the world, it has certain areas that have a lot of homeless people, kids who need positive influences, and teenagers who need guidance into their next steps in life. Getting involved could save people’s lives because the homeless people could get back on their feet, the kids would be more active in their schools, and the teenagers would not turn down dark paths because everyone would be able to work together and benefit each other.

Although I have personally not been able to get involved recently due to College and Covid-19, there are areas that try to give back to the communities.

Interpersonal Communication

Throughout this Spanish 101 course, we had to do about 4 interviews, 2 with our professor and 2 with another student or by ourselves. These interviews caused a good amount of stress and anxiety on my plate but I was able to apply what I have learned in class and put it towards completing a real-life conversation. We also were instructed to do papers that were no longer than 1 or 2 pages in all Spanish which I had also never done but it was beneficial to my learning experience. The final activity we were instructed to do was discussion boards which allowed us to get creative.

Certain random assignments that happened throughout this semester was in our zoom classes. Our teacher would ask different people in the room to answer the questions to put us on the spot and see if we were absorbing the information given to us. We did not necessarily have random interviews, discussion boards, or things of that sort because they were in our schedule online and she would help us by giving us time to prepare for them. I was still able to grow within her random questions because it put us on the spot and made us think about what we have learned. I got better at thinking quicker and coming up with sentences and getting better at paying attention to the words in the sentences. I could be better with studying more often rather than wait for an exam to be ready for any assignment.

Presentational Speaking

The main presentational speaking we had to do was the interviews with our professor and our classmates. Each time, we had different types of topics we were assigned to talk about throughout a variety of chapters. Below is an example of the most recent interview we had to complete:

The very first interview was with a classmate and we had to act as though 1 of us was a news reporter and the other was a freshman student. The second interview we had was with our teacher and we had to talk about our families and introduce them to her. The third interview we had was about a friend visiting us in our hometowns and we had to explain activities we would be doing while they were there. What challenged me the most with each of these interviews was meeting the time requirements and having correct female and male conjugations. Each interview I tried to make sure I prepared as much as possible before the interview in order to not only grow mentally but also be successful on the assignment. For the most part I believe I did good but I feel that I could have reviewed the information more to prepare myself for the interviews.

Presentational Writing

I participated in presentational writing by writing articles every week in my Academic writing class. Each week we had to write about different views of a topic we chose. I will insert below the article:

Weekly-Article-8-1

Then, in a paragraph, write a reflection that includes each of the activities you described above in which you explain how you have grown with each assignment or activity. What became easier and what was difficult? How did you overcome the difficulties? What did you excel at and why? How could you do better next time? Throughout my time in my academic class, I was able to grow with my articles by learning how to look at a subjects’ positive and negative sides. I also grew into getting better at writing long papers which end the end benefited me because writing my final paper which had to be 8 pages in three of my classes made it a little easier. It did become difficult in the end to not talk about the same topics, in the beginning it started off good but as the semester progressed I felt I was repeating myself. I feel I was very good with coming up with educated responses that broke down what the topic was about. I was able to overcome the hardships by finding articles to breakdown that were not similar to the other ones I wrote about before so it would not sound repetitive. I could do better with picking a better topic so that it would not sound repetitive next time.

Interpretive Listening

In Spanish, on some of our VHL homework assignments and quizzes, we would have to listen to a conversation or someone talking I Spanish and we would have to answer questions asking what they said. This was an interesting assignment because it truly made you listen to each and every word that was being said therefore it made me think harder about their words.

The main thing that I listened to were the Spanish recordings which consisted of me listening closely to what the message was. The most challenging concept when listening was mainly how fast they would speak in a language that I am not familiar with. I overcame the difficulty by reading in between the lines of what I certain words did understand which is how I was able to get the answers to the questions that were needed. Even though it was hard, I found that it was interesting that they spoke at a high pace because they are familiar with the language. I grew with each activity because I was able to get used to catching words that I knew after I took some time to answer it.

Interpretive Reading

In my criminology class, I read a story about a serial killer and I had to relate his life to social structure. The whole point of the article was to show how a person’s environment could affect the way they are in adulthood. In Spanish, we had an assignment where we had to read a range of stories in our online textbook. https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/jeffrey-dahmer

In these assignments, there was not a major challenge that I faced with these assignments because my professors both provided information that was needed for me to answer clearly. I found the criminology story was interesting because I could read into the serial killers life and line it up with their environment and get an idea of why they became a killer. My takeaway from the reading was an overall cause and effect of how what happens in a person’s life as a child is the foundation and can almost determine how they will turn out as an adult which was interesting to me. I was able to grow with each assignment because I got used to breaking down the meaning behind the story rather than just watching it and getting no deeper value to it.

When you have finished adding content to this page, delete all the instructions except the link to the Modes of Communication.