Exploring Culture

Exploring Spanish culture is an important factor in learning Spanish. This past semester, I was able to explore different Spanish cultures through LingroHub’s Exploración Cultural assignments. Each assignment was used to look at different Spanish-speaking countries’ views on all of the units we studied this semester (family, food, sickness, etc.). Another thing that helped me learn more about Spanish Cultures was our TalkAbroad assignments. We had to talk to someone from a Spanish-Speaking country and it helped me learn more about what they do in their culture compared to my own culture.

LingroHub and TalkAbroad both helped me dive into different Spanish-speaking countries and learn more about them. I was able to view how different people from different countries lived their lives in the way they eat, spend time with their family, work, and much more. I love seeing how similar and different my culture is from others. It helps me open my mind and grasp how big the world is. It helped me understand that not everyone lives the same, and realized in a world of stress, it’s OK to live a little. I noticed in a lot of Spanish cultures they had more freedom in their day to day or they had something fun they did throughout the week. It made me appreciate their culture and their love for life. It’s inspired me to want to live a life that will create happiness instead of stress in my life.

Engaging in Communities

Being able to communicate with my classmates and people from Spanish-speaking countries helped me learn more about having conversations and avoiding using English. It helped me learn more Spanish by listening and talking to others in Spanish.

Moving from online to in-person Spanish helped me engage more in communicating in Spanish. Being around an environment where Spanish is frequently spoken helped me learn Spanish more efficiently. Being able to talk to students and my professor in Spanish helped me learn more.

Interpersonal Communication

TalkAbroad was very beneficial for learning Spanish and having interpersonal conversations in Spanish. It helped me grow confidence in speaking and listening in Spanish. All of the oral, audio, written, and reading activities were beneficial to me in learning Spanish and helped me increase my communication skills. If I didn’t have these benefits it would be hard for me to have to succeed in Spanish.

SPAN-102-TalkAbroad-La-buena-salud-y-la-comida-

I grew with each assignment by getting better with each assignment. Something that I struggled with was understanding what exactly was being told to me and pronunciation. Luckily, I was able to overcome this through repetition and practice. With practice, you can accomplish anything. I was good at writing in Spanish and all of the projects I had. When anything involved creativity, I thrived. I learned how to communicate with others in Spanish, and in the future, I hope to be able to speak more fluently.

Presentational Speaking

We had a lot of projects in Spanish where we had to present in Spanish. I created a few video projects that were presented in class.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LDtJmzNTEzuOV8pEuipP41VvydL2NsLb/view?usp=sharing

For me, the challenges I faced when making or presenting presentational projects were pronunciation and having a good flow. Although I’m not fluent in Spanish, I hate reading off a script, so I tried to memorize what I had said as best as I could. I also had to rerecord several times to make sure I pronounced certain words right to make it perfect. Overall, it helped me with pronunciation and speaking/writing in Spanish.

Presentational Writing

I had to make a few flyers for Spanish to show being active and how to deal with ADHD. These helped with my writing and creativity.

La-Falta-de-Atencion-ADHD

I grew with each assignment through writing in Spanish. I had to write paragraphs in Spanish and then make sure everything made sense. It was like solving a puzzle. I had to make sure I used the right verbs, grammar, conjugation, and a lot more. These assignments helped me learn the vocabulary and the importance of knowing these words in Spanish. Over time, it became easier to write in Spanish and succeed in the class/units.

Interpretive Listening

I struggled with listening to Spanish the most. It was hard for me to understand Spanish right away. I had to listen to it a few times to truly understand it.

We listened to a lot of things in Spanish this Semester. We listened to Teresa talk about her family and we listened to advertisements about eating healthy. For me, a lot of it was hard to understand until I listened to it several times. When it came to listening, I needed repetition to truly understand what was being said to me. I think I grew over the semester by being able to listen to recordings in Spanish more efficiently and effectively causing less repetition.

Interpretive Reading

LingroHub was beneficial to me when it came to reading. We had to read different paragraphs and be able to answer the questions that went along with them.

A lot of things we had to read were emails, articles, and stories in Spanish about the unit we were in. I didn’t struggle very much with reading. I thought that was the easiest part of the class. When I can visually see something, it’s easier for me to use context clues if I don’t know a word or phrase. With each reading, I was able to learn new words and how they are used in Spanish.