Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

During my course of Spanish 101, I learned that there can be significant differences among Hispanic cultures. Just because they may all speak the same language, there are nuances to each area’s language, and there can be a big difference in the cultures as well. Peruvian language and culture is not the same as El Salvadoran language and culture which is different still from Spanish language and culture. For example, in Spain, they still use vosotros when communicating while most other places do not. Another example would be the siesta. Several Hispanic countries still observe a daily siesta while others have started to move away from the tradition. It has been interesting to learn about a few of the differences among Spanish-speaking cultures such as these.

Engaging in Communities

I believe that it is important to engage in different global cultures and communities. It helps me to understand the people better and gives me ways to recognize and understand both our similarities and differences. We have so much in common and yet those unique things, the ones that make us different, are the things that make us the most interesting. They give us different strengths. One example of this is that I am pretty shy and reserved. Most of my Hispanic and Latina friends, especially the females, are not. They are often dramatic and exuberant and outgoing, and I love that about them. By engaging in their communities, I also learn different skills. One of my El Salvadoran friends taught me how to make pupusas, and now they are one of my favorite foods to make. It may seem like such a simple thing, but I believe it can often be the little things that really bring people together. Engaging with different communities also helps give me a different understanding and viewpoint of the world by participating in their traditions and their cultures. It opens my eyes and my mind and makes me a more empathetic, understanding, and accepting person overall.

Interpersonal Communication

Participating in interpersonal communication really helped me grow my Spanish-speaking skills. It is one thing to plan out and prepare writing or speaking assignments, but it is completely different doing it in real-time. Trying to hear and understand, translate, form a coherent response, translate again, and speak aloud my response rapidly really stretched my skills and helped me learn my weak points and where I need more practice. Having immediate correction of my Spanish from the teacher while I spoke was extremely valuable in helping reinforce the concepts I wasn’t very good at. When responding so quickly, I don’t have time to look things up, I just had to know them. If I didn’t have the words for what I wanted to say exactly, I had to think of another way to say it that used the words I do know. At the beginning of this class, I could barely speak short sentences and answer simple questions, but by the end I could answer much more complex questions, adding both length and additional details. Sometimes it almost felt like a puzzle to navigate what I wanted to say using my basic skills, but I enjoyed the challenge.

Presentational Speaking

I only had to give one presentation during the course of this class. I had to describe my college and the things I did while being a college student. Presentation speaking, although in some ways easier than real-time listening and responding, is in its own way difficult. It felt (and was) much more formal. I did have a lot of time to prepare, but because it was more formal and I had the preparation time, I felt a lot more nervous for the presentations. I felt like I had to get it perfect, that there wasn’t room for mistakes. I know that in the daily back-and-forth speaking of the classroom, mistakes were ok because of the informality. During the presentation, however, I wanted everything to be just right. Not just my grammar and my word, but also the way I spoke it. I wanted to be smooth, without a lot of starts and stops, and have good pronunciation so that I could be understood. I didn’t want to just memorize a script but wanted to be able to speak more fluently and naturally. Trying to perfect my speaking and pronunciation helped grow those valuable Spanish-speaking skills in a way that informal, real-time speaking did not.

Presentational Writing

We wrote often during the course of this class. Sometimes the writings were informal, questions that we answered by writing and then eventually out loud for correction and understanding. Other writings were turned in as essays. We would write the rough draft in class, with no notes, have them given back so we could see our errors, and re-write it correctly, so that we gained the valuable experience of realizing our errors and correcting them ourselves. Looking at something I knew was wrong but having to figure out the correct answer myself really helped reinforce those concepts and cement them more clearly and solidly in my mind than if I was given the correct answer from someone else. I liked having the time to really think through what I wanted to say and write them in the best way that I could. This is also a different skill than speaking since I had enough time to think everything through, going through all the things I know, and planning it out. I enjoyed the essays because it gave me a better chance to use concepts and words I might have been slightly less familiar with, that wouldn’t come to me when I was trying to quickly speak aloud a response, but that I could remember given enough time. During this course, I was able to go from writing only short sentences to writing essays.

Here are some examples of my written work:

Proyecto-1-PDF

Proyecto-3-PDF

Interpretive Listening

We had many listening activities throughout the course, both in our homework assignments and in class. We had the chance to practice listening when our teacher spoke but also when the other students around us spoke. The homework also provided Spanish spoken in different accents and at varying speeds. This was helpful because it gave us a taste of how Spanish, although technically using the same words, can end up sounding very different depending on who is doing the speaking. Just as British English doesn’t necessarily sound like American English, Mexican Spanish and Peruvian Spanish will also sound different. It takes quite a bit of ear training to be able to follow along. For example, when some speakers pronounce a “v”, it sounds like a “b” sound. So “vivir” turns into “bibir” or “va” turns into “ba”. It takes time and practice and sometimes context clues to understand and know what the other person is saying if they use different pronunciations like this. Also, many Spanish-speakers speak very rapidly and it is hard to follow along. I think one of the most useful phrases I probably learned this semester is “más despacio, por favor” (slow down, please). Again, it takes practice to be able to follow along, and this class gave many opportunities for that practice.

Interpretive Reading

We had many reading exercises to complete during this course, usually in the homework. I was surprised how quickly the book had us reading long paragraphs in Spanish. A lot of times it would use many words we hadn’t learned and we had to rely on either a good dictionary or context clues to get us by. I tried to rely on context clues since, in real life, we probably won’t have a dictionary with us or time to use one in a real-time conversation. This would be a lot like talking in Spanish in real-life though. The person I may be talking to isn’t going to know what I do or don’t know in Spanish, so it will be on me to use context clues or ask for an explanation for something I don’t understand. The benefit of it being written, though, is that I could go back and read it several times, taking my time to look for context clues that could help clarify what was going on. Sometimes, it was frustrating having to read it through so many times, but each time I could figure out something else new to piece together what it was trying to say. Again, this was another valuable skill to learn and practice for more real-life Spanish interactions. It is not all about vocabulary and grammar when using Spanish in real-life. There are a lot more skills required, and this course really helped teach a lot of extra skills for learning, writing, speaking, and listening to Spanish.