Exploring Culture

A practice that has helped me gain a better understanding of Spanish speaking cultures is a cheek kiss when greeting people. This is not something that is common in the United States, there tends to be a promotion of individualism. In Spanish speaking cultures it is normal to greet a peer with a kiss, or two, on the cheek. This demonstrates how close knit communities are in these areas.

This particular practice has helped me realize how Americans prioritize individuality and independence. While giving someone you are meeting up with a small kiss on the cheek is completely normal in Spanish speaking cultures, this is outlandish and rare to do in the United States. Most of the time a lot of people won’t even give their moms a kiss on the cheek when greeting them, much less a friend or peer. This has helped me realize how divided and independent we are as a society.

Engaging in Communities

I think that activism is extremely important. This can be seen as something like a group of communities coming together to protest a common issue or injustice. It is important to participate in things that are larger than yourself and your community because it brings us all closer together in the end by sharing a desire and passion and desiring change.

While this is not something that I have personally gotten to experience, I have been living vicariously through those who do go out and protest. In the future I would love to attend more protests and actively fight for what I believe is right in this world.

Interpersonal Communication

Talk abroad is an opportunity to engage in a conversation with a native Spanish speaker. You can choose who you engage with, and the conversation lasts fifteen minutes. There are designated topics to speak about in order to help the conversation flow better. By the end, you are surprised you made it through a whole fifteen minute conversation with a native speaker!

While I have taken three years of Spanish prior to this course, there was still a lot of room for improvement. I would make minor mechanical errors in my sentences, and of course there was still a lot of vocabulary for me to learn. Going into the talk abroad assignment I was overwhelmed with nerves and anxiety. I was absolutely terrified to speak to a native Spanish speaker since I’m still a beginner at speaking Spanish. However, by the end of the fifteen minute conversation, I was shocked that I had made it to the end with such a successful conversation. I completely understood what she was saying and vice versa. Overall this has made me a lot more comfortable in my Spanish speaking skills and I would love to have more opportunities like this one in the future.

Presentational Speaking

This particular presentational speaking assignment, was where we had to create a three minute video talking about our family, their character/physical traits and what we liked about them. While there were a lot of things that could have gone better with this project, I think that overall it went well.

During this project I read off of the note cards I had prepared a lot, mostly because I was nervous. This is something that I would change in the future, as well as have a better prepared script that is more memorized. I think one thing that I did really well in this project was using the vocabulary and verb tenses that we had learned in this unit. Sometimes I struggle with using new material and regress back to using basic sentences, however in this project I successfully used new material and language that I had learned. https://hub.lingrolearning.com/#/61a4b05dcec0c72a082575b7/6053b1309a99c1c88b357234/6053b11b9a99c1c88b356977

Presentational Writing

In this assignment, presentational writing was used to create an advertisement for an after school club. I chose to do an advertisement on yoga. https://hub.lingrolearning.com/#/61a4b05dcec0c72a082575b7/6053b1309a99c1c88b357236/6053b11c9a99c1c88b3569e5

In this project, I think I did a lot of things very well. I used a lot of vocabulary from this unit, my sentences were complex but also very clear and I had minimal grammatical errors. One thing that I did not do super well on was meeting the word count. One thing I can do in the future to prevent this issue is to better plan out my sentences and what I want to say. I essentially winged this assignment and hoped for the best, but had I prepared and planned better, I think it could’ve been a lot better.

Interpretive Listening

Throughout this course there were numerous activities where we had to demonstrate interpretive listening. There would be audio clips of a native speaker saying something and we would have to distinguish what they were saying. There were also video clips of Spanish speakers talking about various topics that we had to follow along with and interpret. https://hub.lingrolearning.com/#/61a4b05dcec0c72a082575b7/6053b1309a99c1c88b357238/6053b11d9a99c1c88b356a22

One of the things that was the most challenging for me, was interpreting what they were saying the first time hearing it. There were a lot of words that were hard to distinguish and make out since the sentences all kind of blended together. After watching it a few times in class, it was easier to hone in on what I didn’t understand and interpret it properly. I think that these types of assignments did make it easier for me to talk to the native Spanish speakers in talk abroad since I got used to a faster speaking speed.

Interpretive Reading

Throughout the semester there were many cultural readings we had to do as a class based on each unit. These readings varied based on the unit we were learning and not only did it help educate us about other cultures, it also enhanced our Spanish reading comprehension skills. https://hub.lingrolearning.com/#/61a4b05dcec0c72a082575b7/6053b1309a99c1c88b357238/6053b11d9a99c1c88b356a43

I think the most interesting thing I found from these cultural readings was how similar, but different our cultures are. A lot of values that the people wrote about in the assignment are similar to the values that my family holds and demonstrates. For example, family gatherings are super important to Mexican culture, even though my family is Mexican, it is easy to see this in my own home and familial circle. I also see this in a lot of my friends cultures. These assignments helped me realize that our cultures really aren’t as different as we may think they are.