Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Through Lingro Learning, I was able to learn about personal experiences of individuals from hispanic countries and do research of my own as part of my unit assignments. Throughout the semesters of learning Spanish my knowledge of hispanic culture has grown mainly through these sections within our units. I have learned things such as the effects of technology and interpersonal communication to what art and music is popular in certain countries.

These sections helped me to better understand the day to day life of people living within those countries. I never thought of what type of art styles were founded in hispanic countries until now, and it is really interesting to see how that has influenced the United States and its art background. I have never really been a huge fan of art, but our unit surrounding it has really opened my eyes to how influential different cultures are to one another in respect to the arts and more.

Engaging in Communities

Something that Americans seem to struggle with is stepping outside of their communities and their “norm” to see and admire the world around them. It is easy to become stuck in a normal (and local) routine day in and day out. Of course it is important to engage in your local community, but engaging in the global community opens up so many new doors of communication and learning that are just not possible at the local level. Being able to meet people from such diverse backgrounds is something that is life changing.

Through our pairings with the students from Argentina, I was paired with a man named Martín. He is such a cool and interesting person! We would record our zoom calls and then stay on zoom afterwards to get to know each other and talk about our likes, interests, and what our respective country was like. We have since become friends and followed one another on social media and plan to play video games together. This opportunity would have never been possible without being in this course.

Interpersonal Communication

Through our pairings with Argentina and our zoom conversations, I feel that I was able to learn more and speak more freely. I did like using Talk Abroad, but there was a more personal aspect with this seeing as we were able to speak more than once. I also liked being able to help him practice English. There were very little language barriers and we were able to help one another if we were stuck on a certain word or phrase in the other’s language.

Initially I was nervous to talk to students learning English. Once I was able to join the call and start talking to Martín everything went perfectly. I had few issues speaking with him, other than having some schedule complications that we were able to work out eventually. Next time I would make sure to prepare some general topics of discussion, but other than that I would do the same as I did this semester.

Presentational Speaking

We did not have many speaking assignments this semester besides the ones in Lingro. Towards the end of each unit, we would record ourselves speaking on a certain topic related to the unit that we were currently studying. We could redo the recordings as many times as we needed, but it needed to sound authentic and not like we were reading off of a piece of paper.  

In the beginning of the course we were asking to record descriptions of ourselves. On the surface this does not sound very difficult, but having to remember the vocabulary to be able to describe yourself for a decent amount of time can be difficult. I struggled with vocabulary so I am constantly studying old and new vocabulary alike.  

Presentational Writing

Our presentational writing activities mainly consisted of our discussion boards. They would be related to our current unit and was a great way to converse with other online classmates. It was great being able to read other interpretations of the prompt or people’s personal stories.

Making my own initial post was not insanely difficult for me. My issue was getting around to responding to other people’s prompts. Whether it be that not many people had responded when I did or there were many responses, I found myself procrastinating responding to my peers. I have gotten better throughout the semesters but it is definitely something I need to work on.

Interpretive Listening

While learning new types of conjugations, we would have listening activities where we would have to pick out the subject of the verb. It was difficult at times discerning the subject when the audio was fast, but we could listen as many times as we needed to.

Being able to sort through audio in real time was difficult in the beginning, but through practice it has become easier over time. It has also helped me in the TalkAbroad conversations and through the zoom calls with the students from Argentina as well. My ability to comprehend native speakers has become easier, although I still have a ways to go.

Interpretive Reading

In class, we read the story entitled “El eclipse”. It was an interesting story of a man being captured by indigenous people after becoming lost on their land. We studied this story in multiple units.

There was vocabulary in the story that I did not quite understand. This was to be expected, but it did help my ability to use context clues to find out what is going on. I did struggle with being able to verbally recite aspects of the story and use the past tense, so this is something I will have to work on as well.