Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication
Exploring Culture
In LingroHub, we had a few homework assignments that helped me understand culture. There was an assignment that had us pick a country and research about it, we picked a famous person from another country and wrote about them, we talked about foods, some holidays, finding differences in Hispanic college websites compared to ODU, and more.
With all these activities, I got to learn a lot about Hispanic culture and things that are valued. For example, for our last LingroHub assignment we got to pick a famous person and I chose the actress Salma Hayek from Mexico. From other assignments, I learned that there was some differences in cultures and holidays that are celebrated that didn’t necessarily change my world view but it did open my eyes a little more. We also looked at and compared school websites. I found that most Hispanic school are a little more religious than ODU and they advertised some different things than us. I also found that they had different majors which was cool.
Engaging in Communities
Engaging in your community is very important. Talking and getting to know people can help you in many different ways; it can set you up for a job, provide connections for you for said job, increase trust which leading to increased visibility and understanding of issues and empowers communities to have their say over decisions that affect their lives, their towns, cities and neighborhoods. Globally, engaging in community is also very important. Global community engagement enables government and public decision-making organizations listen and in time demonstrate the impact of community contribution. Community engagement, then, builds deeper, stronger and more trusting relationships between public organizations and communities.
I think that our project for unit 1 really ties into the topic of engaging in communities. We made a social media profile and being on social media is one of the best ways to engage in your immediate community and globally. The internet is great at getting your name out there for people to know and recognize.
https://lf.lingrolearning.com/user/profile
Presentational Speaking
During this semester we had many speaking activities. I think our biggest speaking assignment was for unit 4 when we had to talk about our campus at ODU.
We had many opportunities in class to speak and do many informal presentations. At the end of each unit there would be a graded conversation on LingroHub that we would come up with a response and record our voices; I think I did a really good job at those. We would also have a lot of in class “presenting” / speaking moments were we would have to read something out loud in Spanish and Professor Garcia would help and guide us where we needed it; I think I was pretty good at that and pronunciation. Another presentational speaking assignment we had was interviews. We had 3 and I know those are the assignments I had the most trouble with. I had some trouble with them because I thought I had prepared well for them but when it came time to sit and respond to questions I realized I needed to spend more time preparing for them. After the first time didn’t go as well as I wanted I spent more time preparing and slowly started to get the hang of it to finish stronger than I started.
Presentational Writing
During this semester with Professor Garcia, we would write a lot. We wrote for participation credit, projects, quizzes, and more. For unit 3, we had to make a calendar of our schedule and at the end of the calendar we had to write a short paragraph about our schedule that I think ties into presentation writing
My paragraph- “Yo tengo que ir al gimnasio el lunes, martes y jueves por la mañana. Tengo que practicar, SPAN 101, Bio 150, ENG 211, y estudiar. Yo voy a salir con mis amigos, ver television con mis amigos el domingo, y estudiar en la biblioteca con mis amigos todos los dias. Los dias mas ocupados son lunes, martes, y jueves. Los fines de semana estudio mucho y voy a lavar la ropa.”
With writing so much for class, I think I got pretty good at it. I think the participation activities helped a lot because we would be in class with Professor Garcia and he would explain what and how to format our sentences and we would have models to look at for reference. My paragraph at the end of my calendar was somewhat of a challenge because I was still getting the feel for writing in Spanish and conjugating words. But, for unit 5 there was an assignment that we had to write a little about a famous person and I did very well on that. I overcame some of my difficulties with writing by practicing and engaging more in class when we wrote. We had some assignments on LingroHub that would require us the write and I think that helped too.
Interpretive Listening
I think the most time I spent listening to something for class was in unit 4 when we listened to the example of describing her university. In class we listened to it 3 times and when I went home to write my script I listened to it many more times.
In this class we listened a lot. We listened in class when our peers would be reading something, in interviews when Professor Garcia would ask us questions, and all the time in LingroHub for homework. Listening in class was an easy part, it got harder when in an interview because personally, I had to concentrate when I would be asked a question, and LingroHub could also get difficult because you were by yourself doing homework and if yo didn’t know something you would have to try and figure out out by yourself. I naturally started to overcome some of these challenges as the course went on because I started to learn more words which was also interesting. I know I have grown with being able to listen. An example of this would have been in the final interview, I knew what every question I was asked meant; which is a lot of growth for me.
Interpretive Reading
A few weeks ago I had some down time outside of class and I started wondering about the dominance of the Spanish language across the world and even America. So, I found an article and started reading about how Spanish is now the second most popular language in America behind English and reasons to learn it. It was a very interesting article to read and had a different perspective which was nice.