Exploring Culture

Growing up Mexican American in Texas, I was not raised in a Spanish speaking home and I didn’t celebrate many traditional Mexican holidays. This Spring Semester I have learned more about Spanish culture than I ever had in my life. I enjoyed learning about the different holidays in the Mexican and Spanish culture as well as learning the differences and similarities in the Spanish Education system.

This class has pushed me to reach into my Mexican roots and embrace my Spanish culture. I didn’t realize the importance of maintaining my Spanish language and culture but after taking this class, I have really discovered that I enjoy practicing it. This class has been very challenging for me and has made me reach out of my comfort zone. The Although Spaniards and Mexicans speak the same language, they have very different ways of practicing our culture. One challenge that arose as I was learning was how different celebrating Día De los Muertos in different Latin cultures. Día de los Muertos in the Mexican culture is celebrated by visiting the graves of love ones and making an Ofrenda. Day one we would bring them flowers and prepare dishes like mole or tamales. Day two is celebrated by bringing fruit, bread, and chocolates to their graves. In Spain, they would make a picnic and cook the food different than in Mexico. I wanted learn to celebrate Día De Los Muertos correctly rather than the way I assume they it was celebrated.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging in my community is beyond important to me. We the people are the only thing that will make the community a better place and we need to work and understand together to accomplish a perfect community.

I’ve done a lot of different engagements with my immediate and global community since I have joined the Military. I have volunteered in many community service activities that include cleaning beaches and parks to make the environment safe for the residents. I also attended local schools to help out students with education since they are the future. I also take part in donating to my local church to help the mission of giving back to the community and providing for those in need.

Interpersonal Communication

Spanish 101 has taught me a lot on how to speak and pronounce words I struggled with in the past. This class has also taught me how to put sentences and phrases together that help express how I am feeling and trying to describe. Another thing that really helped with my Spanish learning was the interviews I had with my professor and my partner. The interviews put pressure on me to practice spanish so I could be my very best in Spanish and to perfect my accent. I can honestly say I have improved in my Spanish speaking and have started to feel more confident speaking Spanish.

Every assignment and quiz has helped me gain so much knowledge and has helped me better understand Spanish more. The discussion boards helped me branch out my communication skills and understand the culture more. The most difficult part for me is pronunciation and working on my accent. My accent was my biggest insecurity and this class has helped me get better with it. I would say I excelled in helping out others like my partner. This was a challenge for me and my knowledge of Spanish has grown as because of this class.

Presentational Speaking

One assignment my teacher assigned me this semester was a video project of my two favorite places. I had to explain the reason why I like these places and what were my dislikes as well. The video project tested my knowledge in speaking and vocabulary.  

This project made me really memorize and learn the vocabulary for the week because I had to continually practice what I was going to say and make sure I was familiar with it. I personally grew in this course and learned so much. It is rewarding to know that I have grown in my Spanish speaking skills and that my grades I receive from are reflecting it.

Presentational Writing

My class did not really get assigned presentational writings other than discussion boards and composition writings. These were to strengthen our understanding of vocabulary.

Proyecto 5 project helped me on my Spanish writing skills. The project was to write about a person who I admired and should received an award. This composition writing helped me with my accent placement. My biggest obstacle with writing in Spanish was placing the correct verbs in the right spots. These certain activities became easier the more they were assigned to me.

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Interpretive Listening

Every quiz that we had for this semester had a portion where we had to listen and answering the correct sentence or word. We also had Culture videos that spoke Spanish to help understanding the way other Spanish countries live.

There were a lot of questions following the culture videos that made me question if I understood the concept. This was definitely challenging to me because I would have to go back and listen to the video again in order for me to understand. I overcame this challenge by using context clues to get a better understanding of what they are saying. The videos were very interesting and I was able to learn a lot about different cultures such as Chile and Spain. My Spanish language got stronger with these activities in getting use to other Spanish accents and understanding what they were saying.

Interpretive Reading

There was a learning website assigned to this class which you had to read in order to understand the quizzes that were assigned. We also had to read the weekly assignments in Spanish to know our next assignments.

I personally improved in my reading in Spanish. As the weeks go by through this semester, everything that was explained thoroughly and made sense to me. I learned how to spell words I did not know how to spell before. I also learned the how to place the proper verbs in a sentence.