Exploring Culture

In the program we had to research a variety of countries and cultural aspects of those countries in order to compare how our country is to theirs. Researching a different country every assignment helped me understand Spanish as a whole.

I had no change in worldview as I have a cultural Spanish background, I’ve been heavily interested in for a while!

Engaging in Communities

I’m assuming engaging in ways of work and professional relations. International understanding of communities and learning how to engage with them is an absolute must!

I was in the Army for 6 years. That’s how you learn to live and engage in a variety of cultures.

Interpersonal Communication

TalkAbroad was an incredible experience to get to test my Spanish and push myself to feature a personality within my speech! We did have discussions about some cultural differences. Two examples were to compare what family means for people from the US vs. the importance of family for Hispanic culture., and Which is the sport that people practice the most in Spanish speaking countries. We discussed our views and were able to see each other’s understandings as well.

I’ve had numerous conversations in a work-related field to others who have spoken Spanish normally and have learned customs and lingo to use on the job. I also spoke conversations in Spanish to my wife and my professor.

Presentational Speaking

We had a couple assignment to where we have conversations with our professors and each other. We also used Flipgrid and recorded us explaining some things in Spanish and describing loved ones and stuff like that.

My biggest challenge was memorization and pronunciation of certain words. When being spoken too I felt it fairly easy to understand and communicate back, and I exceled in explaining myself.

Presentational Writing

We ran through a plethora of text messages and emails in our class that lead us to learn to read and reply in Spanish. The program required us to fill in the blanks and choose correct grammar and vocab to reply or fix the writings.

Learning the differences and the way grammar was supposed to be written was supper hard for me. writing Spanish is way harder than speaking and understanding it.

Interpretive Listening

The listening activities were very brief. For example, the assignment had us listen to a word or sentence and we had to pick out what grammar fits it.

The grammar got me here too. Listening I could understand and write it down but some of the way the grammar was like the words we use, and the suffixes of the words threw me way off. I excelled in the male and female and vocabulary sections and the sections about food and occupations!

Interpretive Reading

We had a lot of articles to read in our program, almost too much of it! But reading these articles and learning the stories of the folks that live in these Spanish countries was so interesting! It was probably my favorite part!

We learned about how folks do on a daily basis with their work and family life. We learned traditions and morals and different cultural views of Spanish speaking people! We learned about medicines and different foods and how education and hospitals were varied compared to other countries. Even there was a gender difference in occupations! This led me to want to do research and readings on my own accord!