Exploring Culture
An aspect of Hispanic culture I learned while in class was the differences between American and Hispanic universities. Structure-wise, living on campus is completely foreign to Hispanic universities as they lack dorms. Most students in Hispanic universities commute, and there are usually just the departmental buildings on campus. Compared to American universities, where students live on campus and host facilities to support on-campus students. I also learned the significance of Yerba Mate as a drink and an aspect of Hispanic communities. Yerba Mate serves as a way of gathering and communicating, as Hispanics usually drink it with others for a friendly chat.
When I look back on learning those aspects of Hispanic culture, I am amazed at how impactful the community is. When I learned about the lack of dorms in Hispanic universes, I noticed that socially it allowed students to stay connected to their families and community. So, even in their forms of higher education, they prioritize the student’s connection to their community. In addition, I never knew Yerba Mate was a drink specifically used to bring people together, and it took me aback, as I never knew a drink could have that much influence on a community.
Engaging in Communities
I think it is essential to connect with the global community to go beyond one’s cultural experience domestically. Connecting with other cultures teaches people about different aspects of humanity they may lack when they stay isolated. It instills a more self-conscious, educated, and engaged community once that connection is made.
Interpersonal Communication
Our class focused on speaking to the class and amongst each other during in-class assignments. We would get a task from the professor, discuss the task in Spanish, and present our answers to the class. We also got to add our own opinions on the aspects of tasks, like giving an opinion on influencers and stereotypes.
I remember describing my family’s traditions regarding food when it came to speaking to the class. I explained my family’s connection with seafood and how many secret recipes my family passed around. I specifically excelled at automatically cogitating my verbs by memory without much issue in their use. However, I am still working on automatically using masculine and feminine pronouns since I am so ingrained in using standard English pronouns.
However, my experience with TalkAbroad was mixed, as I felt like my speaking improved, but my nerves got to me. I am constantly intimidated by the prospect of speaking to native speakers because of my lack of preparation or the fear of making a mistake in front of a native speaker. I need to work on my confidence in my own abilities and work on preparing better for my TalkAbroad meetings.
Presentational Speaking
This semester, the class focused mainly on creating videos and on the speaking aspect of learning Spanish. The class made videos about our community’s stereotypes, our favorite influencers, and our family’s customs. Our TalkAbroad meetings also focused on the topics we focused on for our in-class videos.
My experience with making my videos went very well since my writing started to catch up with my speaking skills. This allowed me to make better scripts and convey what I wanted to say to my audience. I was also fortunate to use Canva as a video editing website because, before this, my knowledge of video editing was lacking. It also allowed me to focus more on my pronunciation and bad grammar habits while speaking. However, I want to work on not sounding robotic when I speak for videos, but I know that will come with more practice.
Presentational Writing
Our class focused on writing essays on the speaking topics we did in class, and it was the first time I had to write essays completely in Spanish. Since I write so many essays for other classes, it wasn’t as much of a problem to focus on. However, the huge barrier is the language and breaking away from the standard grammar for English speakers to use Spanish properly.
When writing those essays, I noticed it became easier compared to my past experiences with writing as I learned how to use Spanish pronouns properly. This allowed me to specify what I was writing about clearly and write proper sentences with proper subjects. My sentences became longer and more complex than they were before. However, I am still working on mixing masculine/feminine words and stem-change pronouns.
Interpretive Listening
Our class focused our listening skills on videos correlating with the sleeping topic we were on. We watched and analyzed restaurant ads, documentaries and recorded Spanish interactions.
One thing I focused on is listening to fast Spanish versus Spanish, which is meant to be learned at a slow pace. During one of the videos, I noticed that my mind wasn’t catching up to what the person was saying until I learned to fill in the gaps of words I missed. Similar to how some Southern Americans speak, they speak fast to the point people need to piece together what’s being said through words that add context. That’s what I applied to fast Spanish so I could first hear the subject and then add on with the verbs and adjectives.
Interpretive Reading
This semester, our online workbook changed from half English and Spanish to completely Spanish. Reading the online notes focused more on understanding and applying what was being written. Our class also read manuals, Spanish social media pages, and restaurant menus.
Reading this year didn’t provide much of a challenge to me in the sense that I couldn’t understand it. However, I did struggle with the increase in complexity of the sentence structure as the year went on. In some cases, I would find a word I never heard of or a sentence I needed to deconstruct to understand it. However, these experiences weren’t faults since I am learning from these challenges and furthering my knowledge of reading Spanish.