Exploring Culture

Putting myself into common community spaces or partaking in activities of different cultures (when deemed appropriate) helped my understanding of the culture the most. Not only was I seeing words and understanding the language, I was seeing how the people who utilize that language live. While every culture has its own unique qualities, I did gain a more authentic perspective of how language and culture interact in the worlds of other people.

With a lot of exposure to these cultures via sources like YouTube, I truly got to see how individuals lived from these cultures. Not just the lovely dances, stories, food, and good times. I saw people who would visit their native countries where their families stayed and had to take showers with a bucket and one rag. Maybe their family home did not have power or they had to sleep on the floor, it was not just about how beautiful the culture was, but what an average person would go through on the day-to-day depending on their financial status and accessibility to other resources. People struggle everywhere as we all know, but I feel as though it is important to know the beauty and beast of every culture to truly understand and respect any culture. 

Engaging in Communities

Originally, I was learning about the Spanish Language from free online learning providers, such as Duolingo and YouTube. I grew up in a small town in the Carolinas and I had many friends with various backgrounds and cultures. I have had an interest in the Hispanic Cultures for many years.

During pandemics and other worldly chaos, some families find it beneficial to send their loved ones to other countries as a means of better opportunity. Imagine as someone from a happy home, never seeing your grandparents or parents who you lived withfrom childhood, navigating a new country with distant relatives or 1-2 siblings. I think my exposure to videos similar to the one linked below, makes as an excellent point, that people come from deep roots of hardships, struggles, and pain. But through their lives their art expressions of dance, song, and food, reach the lives of many people across the world. To me, it is important to see the struggles to fully appreciate other wonder aspects of any culture. This class has taught me about not only the wonderful aspects of hispanic cultures, but also reached into issues of gender bias, healthcare opportunities, and all of the things that go into the daily lives of these people from other parts of the world. 

Interpersonal Communication

TalkAbroad was a great experience for me. Funnily, I did not know how excited I could be about understanding someone. Overall, they were a pleasure to meet and I hope to further my education in Spanish so I can properly communicate with more people of various backgrounds. 

The TalkAbroad collaborative assignments were the most impactful and intimate for me so I believe it is appropriate to reflect on that a bit more. From the first collaborative meeting I knew that I would not have many worries in future interactions. My confidence lied in my ability to remind myself while people from the Hispanic diaspora were of a different culture to me, we are all still people. Having a smile, a few laughs and keeping the conversations moving forward made the TalkAbroad experience enjoyable for me. There were moments of miscommunication due to my own lack of understanding, but as mentioned, we picked up the pace and the conversations flowed regularly. I strongly wish that my vocabulary with transitional words and terms of affirmation were stronger during the conversations. For me, leaning on my true personality and having a vocabulary that reflects that makes conversations easier for me, no matter the culture or language. Maybe learning the common phrase for “that’s cool” amongst people of the same age as myself, could have made those interactions that much easier. But since in moments of conversations, words can slip from your mind and I did find myself not being able to articulate 100% of what I wanted to. That said, it was still a great experience. In the end, I learned that taking the time to formulate your vocabulary that properly translates into another culture’s vocabulary can make talking like the person you truly are a lot easier. 

Presentational Speaking

 In my personal experience over the course of the semester, I have had the opportunity to participate in conversations solely in Spanish. These moments tested my ability, recollection, and overall confidence in speaking Spanish throughout the course. 

Many of our speaking activities related to the semester were based around interviews. In a way, interviews can be presentational, presentational of your knowledge thus far. My first interview with Professor Sefik was very interesting. I was so nervous I could barely remember how to speak or what to say. I spent so much time conjugating words in my head and checking over my own grammar that I couldn’t even think of how to properly respond to questions. At the end, she spoke with me and reminded me to relax, and just have a conversation. While there are expectations and milestones to pass in order to assess our Spanish progression, the best thing to help me during all of my interviews or presentations after that was to be myself and just speak to another human.

Presentational Writing

With the use of our digital media, our class collectively worked on discussion posts that pertained to aspects of Hispanic culture. We had discussions on foods, healthcare related events, sports and more as they pertain to the culture.

Our discussion posts related to our module topics and gave us opportunities to see (with youtube videos or personal research) different aspects of the hispanic culture. Our discussion posts required us to understand the cultural significance as it relates to our modules. We then have to discuss our own views about the topics and make commentary on other students’ viewpoints. Written communication from individuals with different insights made the class more collaborative and memorable. The difficulties with these assignments lay in the ability to properly adhere to the assignment. For example, if we had to watch a post completely in spanish and talk about it, you are more reliant on your ability to understand and interpret that data, rather than if we watched a video in english that just spoke about hispanic culture. Overall it was a great collaborative tool which made the class feel more interpersonal.

Interpretive Listening

Most of our modules included many aspects of listening activities. Aside from the mentioned activities that require listening and verbal response (such as the interviews, talkabroad assignments, or flip grids), Our weekly assignments required many listening aspects.

Throughout the weeks, it was common to have LingroLearning assignments that required us to listen to questions, comments, and phrases spoken in spanish. Because of this, even though we spoke in smaller quantities throughout the semester, we did spend a lot of time listening and understanding other people speaking spanish. As a means of understanding a language it is imperative to listen, understand and respond to information by multiple media (verbal or written communication). A part of our discussion posts that was particularly interesting to me was the activity related to favorite sports. The video is set in a “challenge” mode the first time played through to where you can not see any captions to accompass the audio. I thought that aspect was unique and could possibly trip up some people but provide a great exercise to test current understanding of the language.

Interpretive Reading

With the use of our online learning tools, we were given access to ways of learning and interpreting information. There were also linked videos that taught us how to use Spanish vocabulary in a grammatically correct way.

The video above is an example of content that was provided to us throughout the course. While this isn’t the exact video, I have utilized these sources to help me throughout the semester as they follow similarly to the sources provided for us in the course. It provides visuals, colors, or any sensory element to help us understand the information further. Sources alike benefit me the most because I prefer to see things played out to fully understand their use and sometimes, even with words, it is easier to understand visually.

When you have finished adding content to this page, delete all the instructions except the link to the Modes of Communication. (I had already deleted information as I was going so I do apologize for that miscalcualtion)