Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication
There have been a variety of extracurricular listening experiences that supplemented my in-class Spanish learning: La Casa de Papel (named Money Heist in English-speaking countries) is a Spanish (Spain) Netflix Thriller series. Jane the Virgin is a Netflix comedy/drama series following a young Venezuelan-Mexican-American woman living in LA, California. The Duolingo Spanish Podcast self-identifies its stories as “not language lessons; they’re life lessons through language.” It can be found on multiple streaming sites and the stories are read in Intermediate Spanish about real people from Spanish-speaking countries worldwide. The News in Slow Spanish Latino podcast provides a source of current events in Latin-American countries and the world, with slower-than-conversational speech and clear enunciation. Ted en Español, an educational podcast featuring ideas on math, immigration, artificial intelligence, health, and more, features speakers from around the world.
I learned the differences between the Hispanic and Latin dialects by watching the Netflix series La Casa de Papel. Spain’s dialect is different than Latin-American countries not only in the sounds of letters, but in the formality of the speech. Jane the Virgin was a mixed language listening experience, due to one of the main characters speaking primarily Spanish; this gives the listener a break, allowing time to process the word order and context, since it is slightly different than English. The Duolingo Spanish Podcast, one of the most advantageous to my listening experiences, highlights the nuances in different cultures. One of my favorite episodes is the story of Dolores from Neuquén, Argentina (available below). In this Duolingo episode called “Extrañamente idènticas,” the “ll” sound is pronounced “sh,” so the word “calle” would sound like “ka-shey” in the Argentinian dialect, as opposed to “”ka-ye” in most Latin-American countries. The words have the same orthography, but are pronounced differently based on region and culture. The News in Slow Spanish Latino podcast presented new vocabulary that we hadn’t gotten to in class yet, but provided an opportunity to learn new words that I recognized in other episodes and podcasts later on.
The most challenging aspect of listening to Spanish is the speed; in spoken language it is harder to know when one word ends and the next begins. In order to overcome this, I played Netflix in-browser and used the “Language Reactor” Chrome web extension to live-translate from Spanish to English. Ted en Español events are spoken much quicker and with more emotion, and this made it difficult for me to keep up, and I tended to get overwhelmed while listening. The fix for this was the option “Change podcast speed” given in the bottom left of the episode page (Pictured below).
Spotify option to “Change podcast speed” displayed in Spanish. 
The most interesting aspect I found in my listening experience was how much the slight change in accent or pronunciation of a word made a difference in whether or not I understood it.
My takeaway from my listening experiences is that each one built upon the next, whether it was learning different grammatical techniques or familiarizing myself with a new dialect, the core of the language did not change. Also, much about the society of the storyteller can be learned through the tone, speed and pronunciation of their language; the experiences shared through these stories constantly remind me that the struggles and the triumphs that we have in our own country are shared worldwide.