Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Some important things that I do to gain understandings of different cultures is going to different restaurants, buying certain day to day products, and simply using my phone to listen to music or just scrolling through social media. This allows me to experience the different cultures in their world and to research and use their different ways of living. It gives me a better understanding on why they do certain things differently and I can maybe use those ways in my day to day ways.

When I go to my favorite local restaurants I am able to see, hear, smell, and feel what its like to be apart of the culture and get a general understanding of what it’s like. When I’m there i get to taste and smell the foods they eat everyday. I also get to hear them communicate in there languages which is so interesting and fun to hear. This makes me feel included and not judge anyone of a different culture because I’m apart of my own culture that they are observing as well. This allows me to not stereotype or judge anyone for doing something differently than me.

Engaging in Communities

It is so important to be engaged in your global and local community because it allows the people around you to know that you are not selfish and you care about others. This perspective people have on other people is important for you to show your community that you care and that you want to make changes for the future. So many cultures are judged and discriminated and getting involved with changing that goes a long way.

In my community I am really big on helping people and volunteering. Recently I was able to help out at a toy drive for kids that can’t afford toys at Christmas. Not only does this make me feel good that I’m helping other people but also this brings awareness to global and local poverty. If we can influence more people to help out and come together our world will be a better place.

Interpersonal Communication

This semester our Spanish class we would communicate through discussion boards and zoom. Some discussion boards were simply getting to know each other and we would talk and english. But as the semester went on we got to speak to each other in Spanish on the discussion boards.

I really enjoyed the discussion boards that we did in this class. It was so cool to meet and learn about everyone in the class. It’s hard working and doing class online and being able to get that genuine connection with someone but the discussion boards definetly help. It was also cool to see us being able to write out our sentences towards the middle/end of the semester and being able to understand and respond to them. As we were learning how to comprehend and communicate Spanish we could also see our classmates process and how they would respond to us.

Presentational Speaking

In my Spanish 101 class we completed 5 conversation presentations with our partners and 2 Oral Exams with our Professor. These were cool to see us progress in a way of being able speak Spanish and understand each other.

Each conversation with my partner was based off of the unit we did the week prior. So, each week we would continue introducing ourselves and building off of that, then we would ask each other different questions based on what we learned that week. This got easier as each week went on because it would all start to flow nicer each time and make it easier to understand. The oral presentations were also very interesting. The first one was a complete disaster for me and i really could only understand one thing my professor said. But, the second one went really well and i was able to hold conversation. My one weakness was incorporating verbs correctly. I think I should’ve reviewed my verbs beforehand and really try to incorporate them more.

Presentational Writing

In Spanish 101 we did 5 writing projects. Some were letters, calendars, recordings, and emails. These were more difficult for me because I had a hard time correctly forming sentences in Spanish.

Something that i find still difficult for me is writing a formal letter. It was challenging because I have never even wrote a formal letter like that in english so it was hard for me to form sentences and nominate someone when i didn’t really know what to do for it. Something that I did improve on was forming sentences and pronunciation of words and letters. I had a hard time with vocabulary in the beginning but as I kept doing it frequently it all started to flow better.

Interpretive Listening

In this class we were quizzed on our listening skills and being able to hear a word and match it to its spelling. In Spanish letters are pronounced and spelled differently so I had to pay close attention to it. We practiced our listening skills through LingroLearning and quizzes given to us.

In this class i heard the Spanish alphabet, the silent letters, and all the vocabulary words. Listening to all of these different things allowed me to hear the correct pronunciations and spelling. Also helped me form sentences. One video I struggled to watch was the 12 Mesas 12 Fiestas in España. This is because it was hard to understand the names of the fiestas and months they were talking about. It was also hard to understand them because they just showed clips of each one with no description of what or why the festival was a thing.

Interpretive Reading

One of the articles I got to look at was for a discussion post. It was to research how Spanish speaking countries do college. And look at what the similarities and differences are compared to the United States University systems and ways.

https://www.expatica.com/es/education/higher-education/study-in-spain-101452/

This assignment was very interesting because I got to learn the differences and simlarities of college in Spain. Being able to see how a different culture operates compared to an American one makes me want to try something new or expand my education into something I’m not familiar with. We also got to dismantle the web page of the university and compare it to our Univeristy’s website. In the end the similarites were more in the organization and the differences were in the education system and priorities.