Exploring Opportunities.

At the beginning of the semester Professor Padilla had told us that this site (VHL) would be where our homework and learning activities were at. VHL gave me so many opportunities to learn and get engaged. If Professor Padilla was going a little too fast for me or if I even zoned out a bit, in VHL it gave me a second chance to learn and understand some of the things that were being taught to us. Sometimes there was a little bit too much of the homework but I am glad there was because it motivated me to learn more and more about the spanish language. (Example Below)

Flash Cultura

In VHL we had some activities that were required by watching a Flash Cultura video. It was a video of people talking to each other and having normal conversation in spanish. We would have to watch this video and after we would answer questions and see if we could figure out if we understood what the video was saying. I think this is very helpful because reading how to pronounce the letters and words are very different from listening to someone say the words that speak in fluent spanish. So it helps me to learn how they are saying it and understand it more.

Experiencing it on your own

Another thing that helps is getting out and experiencing it on your own. In other words traveling to countries where their main language is Spanish is very helpful as well. A couple of years ago I took a cruise that stopped by many countries like Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica and Costa Maya. There were many excursions that we took and along the way, we learned many places and even how to pronounce things, not only that but we even got to see the culture, taste some of the foods that people there eat on a daily basis. Also how people live and where they live! (Pictures down below show some of the places we went!)

Communication

We didnt have many discussion boards to get us engaged with our other classmates. However we did do two of them. One of them that we did was just something simple, there were questions assigned by Professor Padilla and all we had to do was simply answer them. This also lets us see what our other classmates answered and even see if we had anything in common. Even though we didnt have many discussion boards there were still things that helped us interact with other students. For instance some of the reading we had to do was a two person job. We would have a script to read from and we had to guess what word should be there and we would read the script to each other and the Professor would correct us if we made a mistake.

One thing we had to do in Spanish was speaking. We had a few oral exams that we had to do for the class, two were student vs student and two student vs professor. The first student Oral that we had to do was questions about our family. We would have a introduction, greet each other and then use questions that we prepared to have a normal conversation while asking about family. The second Oral was the same thing except we had to prepare questions about what we do on the weekends and what we do with our friends as well.

I think this a excellent way to do things because the professor can correct it later and you can see if you have progressed any by having conversation. However, it can be stressful, I sometimes get very nervous because I am afraid that I wont understand some things and choke under pressure. That also ties in with the Oral with the professor, I feel as if I will not understand things or not know how to respond. Overall I still think its a great way to see how much you have progressed.

Writing Skills

During the semester we were told to write a Composition. This was a way for Professor Padilla to test out how good our writing skills were by using the things we learned to come up with a short paragraph to write about in Spanish. Our first Composition we were told to first brainstorm some things and then write a rough draft, the topic was to write about ourselves. We had to include things like what our name was, where we lived, what we like to do, and our favorite sport, things like that. This class tested us in every category possible, reading spanish, writing spanish, talking spanish, and even hearing spanish. Writing a composition was a excellent way to test that. (Here is a example down below on the first Composition we did on ourselves)

In this composition we had to brainstorm some things then take that and create a nice simple paragraph about ourselves using the brainstorm we made. After brainstorming we would turn that into a rough draft, then Professor Padilla would go over it and show us things we missed. Then for the next assignment we would go back and create a final copy using the revised draft that the professor helped us with. This is very helpful because it really makes us realize what we did wrong and we can makeup for it by making our final copy.

Interpretive Listening

There were different things that helped me understand how to listen to spanish. One of those was VHL, it helped by giving us assignments where the only thing there was, was a play button where we would listen and answer the question to what was being said. Some of them even would say nouns like chair, table, suitcase and, paper. We would have to listen to what was being said and then we would have to choose what we thought the answer was. There were many other activities like this. This helps so much by letting us learn spanish from listening and even how to pronounce the words correctly.

Here was a activity where we had to listen to different words that were playing to see if they were Masculine or if they were Feminine. There were many like these that helped us get involved with listening to spanish.

Interpretive Reading

There were many opportunities given to where we would get to read some of the questions and scripts in the Aventuras book during zoom class. We also got to read things about how last names are different and even how greeting works differently over in Spanish speaking countries. I find this helpful because reading things makes the brain more active and helps it take in more for you to understand.

In this page in Aventuras, I was actually chosen on zoom to read a section of this nice passage. It goes on talking about how in the spanish speaking world peoples last names are quite different from us in the United States. Most people in the Spanish speaking countries actually have two last names. I find this very interesting because its very cool to see that some people are so diferent from us yet so similar. I enjoy reading passages like this because its not only about just work and learning in the class, its getting us engaged in the culture and what it is like in the spanish speaking world.

Progressing

Overall, I have loved this class and have enjoyed how much I have learned in this class. I am glad that I made this eportfolio because it made me realize how much I have progressed over the semester and things that I still need to work on. I am still so interested in spanish and am excited to take Spanish 102 next semester, I am majoring in Marine Biology and I believe that once I get a job I may be working with people that speak spanish fluently. That is why I am excited to start learning even more, that way I will be ready on the field just in case I need to use spanish. I enjoyed this class and I am very happy I decided to choose this for my second language to learn.