Artifacts

Exploring Culture

The main tool I used to connect with Hispanic cultures was my TalkAbroad sessions, which allowed me to speak to people living the culture. Some other avenues to experience Hispanic cultures were through lingo learning and some of the modules they used.

Through my experiences in learning Hispanic cultures, I tend to appreciate the talkabroads more since it allowed me to learn from someone living and experiencing the culture. They continue to change how I see the world from my limited, Americanized view through what they share. I still remember being surprised that one of my partners never owned winter clothes or had to prepare for cold weather. Or, how connected some cultures are to nature and how they appreciate it than just living in it. It also gives me a chance to see how similar our cultures are as well, with family being the main binder to the two worlds.

Engaging in Communities

To engage in your community is to engage in a small part of who you are as a person. Many of us live, learn, and thrive in a community we depend on, and through interacting with it we become part of it. Through our actions the community not only helps us, but in our involvement, we help others we don’t even see. This even counts in the global community, since our actions represent how others see different cultures. Building a better global community through understanding and openness to one another.

Interpersonal Communication

During the semester, I completed two fifteen-minute TalkAbroads, covering topics on ecotourism, immigration, art museums, and historical events. In class, our professor would always incorporate speaking into his lessons through questions he’d provide, and students would be tasked with answering among themselves.

During both TalkAbroad sessions I’ve shown growth in some areas, and stagnation in areas as well. An area of growth I am proud of is my listening and ability to understand Spanish effectively in both formal and informal conversations. This is due to my increased memory of Spanish vocabulary and my increased exposure to Spanish speakers compared to past semesters. However, a major area of stagnation is my speaking ability and my confidence in my ability to speak Spanish. I still struggle with overthinking conversations and words that I already know and know how to use. This hesitation leads to using “ums” and “a’s”, which messes up my sentence structure or freezes me altogether. So, during this winter break, I need to practice to keep and bolter my confidence going into the next semester’s Spanish class.

Presentational Speaking 

The majority of classes involve speaking Spanish to one another, where we either answer a question provided by the professor or solve a messed up sentence. However, speaking played a bigger role in our projects where we had to record ourselves speaking Spanish on a topic.

My speaking skills flourish in casual settings, like student to student speaking activities. In that setting my confidence issue dissipates and my words and thoughts on what I want to say become clearer than when I speak to the professor. I seem to overthink when it comes to speaking to professionals or native speakers since I don’t want to mess up and ruin the conversation. To solve this, I need to realize that one mistake won’t ruin the conversation and that it is ok that I still make mistakes. Other than that, my pronunciation and vocabulary improved greatly and I feel as if it will continue to grow into the next semester.

Presentational Writing

Writing assignments were mainly tied to a bigger project, like a poster board or a script for a video. In one case, the class wrote scripts for an imaginary ecotour and for a timeline for a piece of art or museum. We also created a clothes style guide based on imaginary client’s preferences and body shapes.

For both video scripts and my style guide, I have shown growth in my sentence structure compared to past semesters. In past semesters I struggled with separating my English sentence structure from my Spanish sentence structure. However, now I seem to have found the separation between the two and I have been great since. However, I still struggle with spelling and accent mark placement which can be solved through practice during winter break.

Interpretive Listening

Listening activity stemmed from videos we’d watch that were tied to the lesson, such as a video on the history of a museum or a small drama play. After listening to the videos, the class would dissect them and look for moments in the video to reflect the lesson we were currently on.

Unforutaly I do not have a video of the class participating in the listening activity, but I can provide one of the videos we discussed. Other than that, my listening skills improved dramatically over his semester and before the semester during the summer. I made it a priority to listen to Spanish music and watch TV to train myself to listen and understand what was being said. This helped me significantly during the semester, allowing me to feel comfortable in conversations knowing that I understood most of what was being said without using context clues. .

Interpretive Reading

Reading Spanish was a constant for the semester since our professor rarely wrote in English and all the activities he showed were written in Spanish. One of the main reading activities involved reading a comic about Spanish immigration and stereotypes, where at the end the class would write alternate endings.

Out of all the classes of Spanish I have taken, this semester involved the most Spanish reading. What was challenging was the initial intimidation of seeing all the Spanish I had to comprehend. However, I had some techniques from my other reading intensive classes that translated over into reading and understanding Spanish. It was a slow process, but the time was well spent since I completely understood the text so that I could finish the story.