Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

What has helped me gain an understanding of cultural perspectives in SPAN202 has been the TalkAbroad assignments. Having the opportunity to experience in-person engagement within the language and the lifestyle of people in South America embedded a lot of knowledge about Spanish within me. In these TalkAbroad assignments, we were also required to ask various questions to our TalkAbroad speaker learn different aspects about their culture and lifestyle. Another practice that has helped me gain an understanding of cultural perspectives was our reading assignments, specifically the Viaje a la universidad text.

These practices helped me better understand the values and attitudes in the Hispanic culture by providing hands on activities and interaction. Between the project where we were required to write a summary of Viaje a la universidad and analyzing our TalkAbroad conversations to translate them and identify the areas where conversation was fluent compared to others, this wide variety of engagement was very useful for my comprehension and practice as a student learning Spanish. These practices challenge my worldview by sharing different perspectives and difference of lifestyles. My life as an American is different than other lifestyles in South America and other Spanish speaking countries. I learned about cultural struggles, stereotypes and overall differences within the community. Through education and communication, this course has broadened my knowledge and worldview of the Hispanic culture.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging in your immediate community and the global community allows you to understand your heritage and the life you were born into. These forms of engagement also increases the visibility and comprehension of social issues while empowering global communities to encourage the direction of their livelihoods.

I have had the opportunity to experience and participate in these communities through our stereotype and influencer projects in Units 17 and 20. I learned how stereotypes and influencers affect the engagement in communities. There are both positive and negative results of these effects.

Interpersonal Communication

TalkAbroad is an interactive application that allows students to speak with international people to discuss class units and concepts. This semester, we participated in 2, 15-minute conversations with separate speakers. One of my speakers was from Argentina and the other was from El Salvador. A few other oral activities we completed this semester were our projects where we had to record a video of ourselves speaking Spanish regarding our specified unit. We had various units discussing Stereotypes, Influencers, Family, University and more.

With each assignment I have gained more knowledge within the Spanish language. Upon starting the course, I struggled with conjugation and comprehending oral conversations in a timely manner. I had difficulties maintaining a conversation and often had to ask many questions to repeat or define a specific phrase. As the semester progressed, my understanding for oral communication in Spanish improved as well as my timeliness with responding and grasping different phrases and statements. What was most difficult for me and still is something I struggle with is conjugating the right way. I am fairly fluent in conjugating in the Preterite form, but I often have difficulties with the other forms. I have been able to overcome some of this difficulty by doing the weekly homework assignments and practicing different terms with my friends and classmates. What I believe I excelled in was speaking for a long time in my project videos. Since I had more time to practice and prepare, I noticed I succeeded better in my self recorded project videos.

Presentational Speaking

A few presentational speaking activities I completed in relation to my Spanish learning is class participation, projects and TalkAbroad. In class, we had the opportunity to practice our oral communication in Spanish to get in-time feedback and assistance on our class lesson to aid in improvement.

Within these presentations, I believe I excelled in maintaining consistent communication and using vocabulary. What challenged me most was recognizing specific transition words and using them properly. Phrases and transitional statements such as however, after, furthermore and more have been difficult for me when speaking Spanish. In order to overcome these challenges, I made flash cards for various transitional phrases to help with my comprehension and improve the quality of my speaking when holding conversations in Spanish. Next time, I believe having safe words in case I forget or struggle on another transitional phrase will be beneficial to my learning and communication.

Presentational Writing

This semester, I engaged in various written presentation activities for my Spanish learning, including composing compositions, crafting stories, and engaging in in-class written work. These tasks helped me reinforce my language skills and express my ideas effectively in Spanish.

Throughout this semester, participating in various written presentation activities for my Spanish learning has been both challenging and rewarding. Composing compositions allowed me to gain deeper knowledge in expressing complex ideas and perfecting my grammar and vocabulary skills. While originally challenging, I learned with each composition, structuring my thoughts and grammar became easier, and I became more confident in my ability to share and process my ideas effectively. Researching and organizing information for this course was important. Additionally, with practice and feedback, I learned to adapt my Spanish writing style to different genres and audiences.

Interpretive Listening

This semester, I engaged in various interpretive listening activities for my Spanish learning, including listening to audios, watching videos, and participating in group discussions. These activities helped me improve my comprehension skills and familiarize myself with different accents and speaking styles in Spanish.

This semester, my journey in interpretive listening for Spanish learning involved many sources, including podcasts, videos, and group discussions both in and out of class. One particularly memorable experience was listening to the podcast “Notes in Spanish” by Ben Curtis and Marina Diez, which incorporated authentic conversations between Spanish speakers. Understanding the Spanish language from a native speaker was challenging, as they usually spoke fairly fast which resulted in my lack of comprehension. However, by actively listening and replaying portions of the video or audio, I eventually improved my comprehension skills. What I found most interesting was how informative and real the conversations were. I felt like I was sitting with the speakers holding the conversations which allowed me to experience cultural differences and insights their country and heritage.

Interpretive Reading

This semester, I engaged in interpretive communication activities for my Spanish learning, which involved reading articles, stories, and online resources. These activities helped me improve my reading comprehension skills and exposed me to various topics and writing styles in Spanish.

Engaging in interpretive reading activities this semester provided valuable insights into the language and culture. Grammar formats and conjugations were my biggest challenge. As the semester progressed, I incorporated strategies like analyzing context clues and using WordReference to improve my comprehension skills. What I found most intriguing was the range of topics covered. In our course, we discussed societal issues and cultural traditions. My key takeaway from these readings was the importance of persistence and curiosity in learning Spanish. This course was designed very well so each assignment can broaden and improve students knowledge and help them gain appreciation for the Spanish language and culture.