Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Throughout the semester, assignments in Intermediate Spanish 2 have tackled a variety of cultural nuances and intersectionalities, and helped me as a student explore these perspectives through the lens of the Spanish language. Be that through interpreting art and poetry created in Spanish and Spanglish, analyzing my own cultural experiences and stereotypes I’ve dealt with, or familiarizing myself with multicultural communicative nuances – such as slang – this course has helped me thoroughly expand my knowledge in this way.

In the process of working through the aforementioned assignments and intercultural course topics, I was able to learn – through an academic lens, as I’ve often spoken with friends who have Hispanic and Latin American backgrounds about our cultural experiences – in depth about Hispanic and Latin cultural practices. I found the discussions concerning holidays and stereotypes to be particularly interesting, as it allowed me to expand my knowledge of these topics and how they manifest in Hispanic and Latin American culture, as well as to compare and contrast these aspects with my own culture.

Engaging in Communities

Engagement in one’s community is vital, both for a person’s own personal development and in order to generate social change. As someone raised in a Jewish culture and who has sought out intercultural and social justice knowledge academically, I have specifically resonated with the concept of Tikkun Olam. This is the idea that one brings good into the world and does their duty as a human by participating in “repairing the world”. This means that – in the scales of an individual’s personal, local, and global communities – they need to do their best to advocate for the rights and best interests of all peoples. A person can only truly do so by engaging in those communities. I personally choose to do so through a variety of methods. Primarily, I seek out current global events and topics to spread awareness on to individuals in my personal life who are unaware, and participate in local social justice movements when my physical ability allows. This engagement broadens my worldview by bringing me closer to the causes at the forefront of my various communities, and gives me the opportunity to create social change.

Interpersonal Communication

In Intermediate Spanish 2, there are a few ways that and activities through which students’ Interpersonal Communication skills are implemented. Primarily, TalkAbroad is the method of communication which expands these skills the most. This is through the conversational skills strengthened through the activity, wherein students have a 15 minute virtual conversation with a fluent Spanish-speaker. Other ways this is done is through the exploration of how to express feelings, reactions, opinions, and ideas, which are all skills necessary for successful Interpersonal Communication. Additionally, our Interpersonal Communication skills – specifically the aforementioned aspects – are utilized in peer responses to each other’s projects.

Interpersonal Communication has been the most difficult of the benchmarks for me to improve in. I failed to complete any of the TalkAbroad assignments due to personal issues making my time management suffer. Though I have since developed strategies to implement in the future to prevent this, I had to strengthen my Interpersonal Communication skills through other activities. This was through periodically practicing spontaneous conversations with friends who were familiar with Spanish. This gap in activity completion has definitely hindered my Interpersonal Communication skills, and catching up in that regard is difficult. I plan on being more detailed with my time management moving forward, and ensuring that I give proper attention and practice to Interpersonal Communication.

Presentational Speaking

This semester, Intermediate Spanish 2 was assigned four Presentation projects, the focus of which spanned a variety of topics. We’ve familiarized ourselves with the presentational speaking format and learned various tones, vocabulary, and grammatical choices for Presentational speaking. Through these, our skills in sharing information, speaking clearly and concisely, storytelling, and analysis – all in Spanish – were strengthened.

Throughout the semester, the most difficult challenge for me to overcome in the realm of Presentational Speaking was not reading fully off of a script. I started out at ODU giving presentations in Spanish, and have slowly expanded my skills in not solely repeating a script. Though I still plot out my full speech to make sure it reaches the video time requirement, I’ve been practicing more with not making the sentences as detailed and utilizing reference words to help me stay on track with the flow of the presentation in order to focus on the recording and not my draft speech.

Presentational Writing

Each unit’s Presentation project was accompanied by a Presentational Writing component, the topic of which was adjacent to the recorded presentation. Through these assignments, Intermediate Spanish 2 expanded our Presentational Writing skills by having us carry it out in a multitude of circumstances, such as analytical, informational, or storytelling methods.

As time has progressed this semester, I’ve improved my ability to structure sentences in a variety of Presentational Writing methods through the unit Projects. Each of the four compositions I completed strengthened my Presentational Writing skills, primarily in the sense that I can concisely and effectively convey a broad range of ideas, information, and concepts. I’ve struggled the most with doing so in ways that are both spontaneous – as I struggle without having studied a draft of chronological topics to cover, and have been practicing my Spanish writing skills to overcome this – and grammatically sound. I’ve been attempting to improve my grammar in my Presentational Writing by carefully reviewing it to notice patterns of mistakes I need to address, and not rushing the assessment in order to complete it in a way which is detailed and correct.

Interpretive Listening

Though our projects throughout the semester in Intermediate Spanish 2 primarily focused on building our Presentational Speaking and Writing skills, there were a few instances where they – and the preparation required for these assignments – targeted our Interpretive Listening abilities. This was through the implementation of cultural nuances in our learning, as course topics touched on intersectionality with Spanish, various Latin American, Romani, and each students’ unique cultural experiences, as well as experiences concerning stereotypes.

In our class activities which touched on and centered cultural perspectives and contexts, I strengthened my Interpretive Listening skills in a variety of methods. As shown above, each student selected a poem to analyze and present on, sharing it with the class. I used my presentation as an example of the content, to convey the specific skills it strengthened. Each presentation centered on a different poet and their perspective and expression of their cultural experiences. By introducing each other to this content and watching each student’s presentation – though I didn’t participate in peer reviews, which hindered my skill-building in verbalizing a reaction to and analyzing poems overall – I was able to improve my ability to interpret and understand cultural perspectives and contexts in a variety of poems.

Interpretive Reading

As touched on in the previous section, Intermediate Spanish 2 emphasized the importance of acknowledging and discerning cultural nuances conveyed in Spanish or Spanglish. Though not always as the main activity involved in the assignment, Interpretive Reading was always a prominent aspect of the strengths the projects were trying to build. By assigning a variety of projects in which students had to interpret the cultural perspectives the topics of their presentations were inspired by, students were given an opportunity to expand their Interpretive Reading skills.

In the same project as was described as the artifact in the previous section – as this project was particularly centered on Interpretive skills – we were given the assignment of reading a Spanish or Spanglish poem of our choice, and developing an analysis of the cultural context, perspective, and experiences that the poet was attempting to convey. In mine, I strengthened my Interpretive Reading skills through seeking to understand and analyze América, a poem in which the author explores their Indigenous history and oppression at the hands of Spanish conquistadors. As a student majoring in International Studies and World Cultural Studies, topics concerning intersectionality and multicultural perspectives are ones I feel comfortable with, and these projects helped facilitate my skill-strengthening in this manner immensely.