Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

In Spanish 102F, We did several activities about Hispanic culture that included things like family, food, work life, and more. One of these cultural activities that stuck with me was about the LGBTQ+ community.

This practice gave me a better understanding of the morals and culture of different Hispanic countries. I learned that places like Cuba and Argentina have legal same-sex marriage and places like Paraguay and Guinea Ecuatoril are prohibited or not recognized for same-sex marriage. This changed my perspective because it is Legal in the U.S. but these different countries vary. It tells me that there are diverse morals and practices in Hispanic culture.

Engaging in Communities

Over the semester, I have learned the importance of community. Engaging in your community is important to yourself and everyone around you because when you don’t, much isn’t being done. It is just as important to engage in your local community as it is with the country to be a productive member of society.

An activity we did in Lingro learning was exploring different comfort foods of Hispanic cultures. I belive this helped me because when I think of community, food pops up on my mind. Food brings people together for things like Family dinners/ holidays, as well as bigger community events like block parties.

Interpersonal Communication

During the semester of Span 102, I did something new called talk-abroad. This is a website where you can schedule conversations with native Spanish speakers. We had two fifteen-minute conversations about different topics we learned in class like food, sports, well-being, and work life.

The first conversation I had was all over the place. My Spanish native-speaking partner I was assigned had an accent so it was somewhat difficult to hear her responses. This was also earlier in the semester so I did a lot of improvising during the conversation. A month later we did our second conversation, which I did better in because I was able to study more. What I would have done differently was study the verbs and tenses better to understand more about what my conversation partners were saying.

Presentational Speaking

We did a couple of presentational speaking assignments in Spanish 102, but my favorite one was the Unit 6 project about describing my family. This was fun because I was able to use the Spanish I learned and use it.

This was the first project of the semester and my Spanish was very limited. I think I did very well at using descriptive words to describe my family members. I had to re-do the video countless times because I kept messing up and it frustrated me a lot. The more I practiced, the more I was able to do it. Something that I would have done differently was practice more.

Presentational Writing

In this class, we did a lot of writing assignments. We wrote about sports and activates we do and other things. One assignment we had to do was create an infographic about physical or mental health. I made mine about the common cold.

spanish-2-infographic

In this assignment, I described the symptoms of the common cold, how to prevent it, and treatment if you were to get the cold all in Spanish. This was later in the semester so my writing skills somewhat improved, however, we began to learn reflexive and command verbs In Spanish, which I really struggled with. When this assignment was over, I studied reflexive and command verbs which helped me in the long run. Overall, this was my favorite assignment because I was allowed to be creative and it was also a wake-up call to study more.

Interpretive Listening

In Spanish 102, we completed multiple listening activities on LingroLearning. These activities coorelated to the units we learned like food, family, and work life.

The example above is a listening activity in lingro about people well well-being from Hispanic countries. Many of these tasks were difficult for me because most of the people spoke very fast or with a heavy accent. I would have to re-listen several times to understand what each person was saying. These activities helped me grow because they made me listen to how native speakers spoke.

Interpretive Reading

Over the semester, we did countless reading activities in class and outside of class. The one below is a reading assignment about a boy named Filepe and he describes his family

The reading assignments were the most difficult for me because I am not a visual learner by reading. This activity was around the beginning of the semester and I did very poorly. As I read more in Spanish, I would copy all the words I needed to read and put them in a text-to-audio transformer so the computer could read to me while I read the paper. This was very helpful for me and I was able to comprehend written Spanish better.