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:

CAN DO STATEMENTS:

An Effective Reflection Is:

I struggled with learning how to use narrating stories or things in the past tense. During Unidad 14 I struggled with learning the ends to the ER/AR verbs but I persevered and tried my hardest to learn them. I demonstrated one of my best works to the assignments of that unit when we were learning about the Museum of Art in Buenos Artes. I overcame this obstacle by reading and watching the videos in the unit as a guide to understanding how to narrate a scene in the past. This skill is very important because it allows us to tell stories which is a project I ended up doing. It became a challenge for me during my “Microcuento de Romeo y Julieta” Proyecto, but watching the La Historia De Mamba video showed me how to paint pictures in the past. Listening to the art agents talk about the museums history showed me how to talk in the past participle.

Artifacts

My reflection on my Microcuento is that is was probably one of my favorite stories I have written in Spanish this semester. I first wrote this story in class for a project and wrote it out when I got my corrections for it. A lot of my sentences before I corrected this were without any subject, i added subjects to each of my sentences that were a little too short with information. This artifact demonstrates my corrections and thought to change my words around in order to narrate the story well.

Instructions

Exploring Culture

Some practices that helped me gain understanding was reading and watching the story about Finita. A young girl who immigrated from her home country and lost a part of her identity in the process. The story is about immigration with themes of self identity and family. This story helped me gain understanding of what someone may go through immigrating into this country or another for a better life.

I learned from Finita that family is extremely important is Hispanic culture, along with knowing your culture and country. There are many Spanish speaking countries but the cultures range from each region and I feel like that is understood in my culture as well. As a Pakistani Muslim American I relate to different people of different ethnicities countries and backgrounds because we may share the same religion. I believe these practices and customs in Spanish culture differ from my own yet I still enjoy learning about them. Some challenges I faced while learning about art, music and stories from Hispanic culture is I didn’t know how diverse their world is but it allowed me to see different parts of the world in the different backgrounds.

Engaging in Communities

The importance of engaging in your community is the relationships you can build through it may help you for a long time. It promotes a sense of trust in your community when you can talk with others and build a social bond. The global community can benefit from more people in engaging in it to bring out global issues or concerns that need more talking about.

Interpersonal Communication

My talk abroad conversations included a lot about my favorite story in history. I used present and past tenses while also asking my partner about their own favorite movies or stories. There were many words I learned from my partner and how to pronounce words more clearly as well.

One telecollaborative conversation I had this year that was spontaneous was my Talk Abroad conversation. I was allowed to respond back to a real life person without a script and it was challenging. But as soon as I wrote down some notes and rehearsed what I was going to say, finding filler words in my sentences allowed me to continue the conversation. This allowed me and my partner to slow. It was difficult to first find topics that would be relatable to both of us but when I researched in the textbook about topics such as culture, immigration and movies, it allowed me to come up with questions. I excelled in learning about different ways of saying movies in Spanish while also collaborating with someone from a different background as me.

Presentational Speaking

One presentational speaking activity I completed this year was my project on Ecotourism. I used this project to talk about different landscapes, mountains and lagoons in Iceland. I talked about places I visited and for how long and which activities I completed during my travel.

My ecotourism video was very hard for me to film because I wanted to get every word right. I accidentally mispronounced words in my video and found it difficult to use the units vocabulary. The activity portion in this unit was very specific to eco tourism and I had never experienced that but I needed to immerse myself in it. I struggled with what country to pick and which activities to do but once I did research, I came up with ideas. I enjoyed making a PowerPoint for this presentation and I excelled at making this project up as a whole. Next time I would practice more before trying to shoot the video and getting frustrated too early.

Presentational Writing

This is a story I wrote about Finita’s life and a different outcome of her meeting her father in Cuba. My story illustrates a version of Finitas travel and learning that her father did pass away. This activity allowed me to see the emotional traumas of immigration while also learning about topics such as the DREAMERS.

I first wrote out this story without acknowledging the struggle many people face while leaving their homes and families for a better life in America. I wrote Finitas story with sympathy towards their struggle and for her own identity crises she goes through. Its important that we acknowledge the mental toll it takes on people. This became easier to understand the more i listened to the story. I believe the difficult part has to do with how to reference someone in the past but I overcame that with looking at the grammar of past participles. I excelled in learning about immigration and next time I would do more research on the topic before I talk about it.

Interpretive Listening

One interpretive listening activity I completed this year was listening to the story of The Eclipse. This story was about a priest who was taken by indigenous individuals in the prime of colonialism.

Some things I listened to out of class were stories in Spanish. I find stories that have to deal with drama or death to be the most interesting to watch. It was challenging at points to figure out the rhetorical sentences and statements in El Eclipse or the stories online. My takeaway from this experience is that I am good at listening to stories but I am better with a visual of it as well. I like to see things in real life especially when I am learning something new. I grew with this activity because it prepared me to write my own story in the past.

Interpretive Reading

One interpretive reading activity I completed this year was reading about what clothes to wear in which type of weather. I chose this because I learned a lot of new vocabulary and how to style another person based on their age, and personal touch.

The thing that was most challenging for me was picking which individual I wanted to dress. I needed to come up with the best scenarios and what weather in order to figure out what the person should wear. I overcame this difficulty like searching up different outfits and looking at the units vocabulary list to help me while i wrote this activity. I found that making outfits and reading about them in Spanish to be the most compelling because I love fashion. I takeaway that I need to pay attention to detail more and I will continue to do so in each assignment.

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