Exploring Culture

From Unit 6 to Unit 10, we learned about many different aspects of the Spanish culture. Over the past semester I have learned about many different communities of Spanish culture, from The United States, through Latin American, and all the way back to Spain.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging with the immediate community and the global Spanish speaking community is always important. Whether it is to help friends in need or go overseas and provide aid to Spanish speaking countries. It is always important to understand and speak the language.

Interpersonal Communication

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Presentational Speaking

Throughout my semester we had several occasions where we had to record ourselves speaking. All of them were during Due to WordPress not wanting to upload my recordings or videos, I will try and describe them as best as I can. I’m sorry I couldn’t upload them, WordPress wasn’t letting me.

During my first recording. We were told to talk about our families. During this recording that later became a video, I talked about my parents, my brother, and then my aunt and uncle. The video in total was about 2 minutes in time. I believe personally with that one example that I excelled somewhat at talking about my family to a good extent, and I could do it again. I would’ve added more people if I had known the video was going to be as short as it was.

I wanted to pull a recording from a previous semester, where I was talking to someone on Campus about their life. I forgot which unit it was from, but I talked to Senor Jose Ramos of the ODU Intercultural Relationships Department here at ODU. The interview was about 2 minutes and we talked about where he went to school, what he studied, what he did after college, and what he does now. What I believe I excelled at was even talking to him, as during the first semester I was scared to talk to anyone in Spanish. What I could have done better was make the conversation flow more smoothly, as the conversation was rugged and very choppy.

Presentational Writing

During the semester, we made many flyers and other forms of presentational communication, here are a few examples:

I think with each assignment I grew quite well, exploring many different sides of Spanish culture along the way. Each presentation or Proyecto that included presentational writing was making it easier to write Spanish on my own.

Interpretive Listening

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Interpretive Reading

In English, give a very brief 2-3 line description of interpretive communication activities you read in and out of class this semester, such as articles, stories, websites like the Language Learning Center, etc. that you completed for or related to your Spanish learning. Include a copy of one of these activities; remember to cite it. (See Modes of Communication link for description and examples).

Then, write a short reflection paragraph that includes the activities you described above. What was unclear or challenging for you? How did you overcome this difficulty? What did you find most interesting or compelling? What was your takeaway from the reading? How have you grown with each assignment?

During the semester I read many pieces, from different flyers of other people proyecto’s to stuff about culture with the different unit culture sections.

While reading these, I will be honest, it was challenging to read spanish without having the vocabulary or grammar next to me on my computer. I suffer as I try to read it fast and I always mess up somehow and have to backtrack, it is rather annoying. I always found the most interesting parts of the readings the part where our professor was giving a basic rundown of what we were reading, or we were translating words into english. It really helped me improve on my reading and translating of spanish altogether. I think overall in the end I have grown as a person, but with each assignment, it was a small movement towards progress.