Exploring Culture
The use of Lingro for assignments in class and homework gave me many opportunities to learn from the assignments that talked about Hispanic culture. Although they were entirely Spanish, which made it stressful to interpret but over time my skills grew, and can now understand some of the contexts.
I think the cultural perspective was very interesting and necessary for the understanding and appreciation of the language as a whole. Personally, the practices challenged my worldview in the sense that I didn’t think that other countries work schedules and lunch breaks aren’t the same around the world. I realized that although we’re all different around the world humans still have similar ideas and sayings like someone in America. Although this misconception may seem weird I just thought with different languages there’d be different slang but it seems to be mostly similar.
Engaging in Communities
Engaging with your community is great in many ways, it can give you insight into other people’s experiences in your community. It is also a great way to get to know people and make new friends. In the course of this semester, I created many bonds with people in my Spanish class.
During this semester I bonded with my Spanish class community becoming acquainted with multiple people. Being open and engaging constantly in and out of class made it easier to complete assignments and group projects with people I was comfortable with. It definitely improved my grade to be able to study with some of my classmates and prepare for each class together.
Interpersonal Communication
This semester, I had many discussion opportunities in Spanish class to talk and compare work in Spanish. In class, we used lingro a lot and had ample amounts of practice with reading and writing activities. Along with communication between partners where I would have to repeat what I typed to my partner so they understand and then do the same for me.
Throughout this semester one of my biggest struggles was communicating in Spanish. Especially unplanned communication as I struggle with remembering words and forming a sentence on the spot. As I progressed it became easier to be able to kinda form sentences but even now I still struggle with it. I did excel at repeating and pronouncing the familiar and unfamiliar words in the sentences, which helped a little with sentence structure.
Presentational Speaking
There were many presentational speaking activities this semester for example I had to make a video describing my campus or another of me having a full conversation with a friend. In this link below I will be describing my life on campus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdCuslnqduU
With both of the videos I recorded this semester my biggest struggle was being able to make complete videos without messing up. I would constantly get tongue-tied or totally forget what I was saying. But with persistence and after multiple re-takes I was able to overcome my struggles. I had enough practice with my first recording that by the time I recorded my second it didn’t take as long and was better quality.
Presentational Writing
Although we never had any presentational writing we did have an oral exam where I had to present the knowledge I retained back to my professor. We only had a few writing assignments that were classwork assignments but this oral exam provides a great example of my writing skills.
I have always struggled with writing whether it was in English or Spanish. During this semester I struggled a lot with writing and still do. I’ve been striving to overcome my struggles with spelling and accent marks. But with each assignment I received, I could listen for accent marks in sentences and have learned to slow down when writing to sound out certain tricky words. With this slow but steady practice, I have come to a somewhat comfortable writing understanding but I have lots of improvement to do.
Interpretive Listening
Duolingo has been a big contributor to my understanding of basic skills with listening and writing. I typically spend 30 minutes on Duolingo every night which has given me much practice with various types of listening practices on their website.
In the course of this semester, I have made gradual improvements in my listening skills with two sources of practice. since the beginning, my biggest challenge has been keeping up with the pace of how people speak in Spanish. I’ve worked to overcome this by using context clues to understand bits of the sentence and then hopefully piece the rest together. Although it was hard at first I have become better at it and can even be looked to for guidance from other classmates if they have trouble understanding a listening.
Interpretive Reading
Duolingo has a few ways to get you accustomed to learning Spanish, one of these is the reading portion. This website has an excellent way to read and look at words that may be unfamiliar to you as you complete the level.
The only struggle I had with the reading was remembering what words meant, but with repetition, I’ve been able to identify words more efficiently. The reading for Duolingo was the most interesting of everything on the site since the stories were entertaining and sometimes funny. I can confidently say that after completing each assignment I was more confident in my skills and had a basic understanding of interpreting Spanish by the end of this semester.