Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes of Communication

Exploring Culture

Because this year of learning was done all online because of Covid-19, it was hard for the teacher to truly show us about culture with short zoom classes. One thing that really helped me understand culture was our online learning source “VHL Center.” It gave us videos that described the culture along with our text book which had more information within.

This product helped me understand culture as it displayed the items it would talk about in pictures, or it would show short videos which allowed me to immerse myself in the culture I was learning.

Engaging in Communities

Engaging in our communities is important to build character, especially in the times of Covid, when it is harder to meet and talk with people.

During this year I was lucky to be able to talk with my friends and other members of the ODU community through Zoom about our Spanish learning adventure and how we could improve on techniques to study the language.

Interpersonal Communication

In order to communicate with other students on a similar topic this year, we used discussion boards in BlackBoard. This allowed us to share similar ideas in Spanish and build our strength in writing in a foreign language.

During the beginning of the discussion boards, I struggled to fully grasp how to write sentences in Spanish. Not only that, but I also struggled to follow the instructions within them. Later in the semester, I found that I was able to type most sentences at the same speed I could type in English.

Presentational Speaking

The speaking activities we did this semester were simple in format. The teacher would ask us to show up to the Zoom call at different times to do an oral presentation of questions and answers with the the teacher or another student.

This helped my Spanish speaking skills the most. Being able to communicate with another student, not only helped me refresh my brain on sentence structure, but it helped me build confidence when learning the language.

Interpretive Listening

This is another example in which we used our online learning service, VHL. I would listen to a recording of someone talking or a group of people talking, and I would have to answer question based on what they said in spanish.

This helped me learn to actively listen in Spanish and allowed me to hear an example of what someone who fluently speaks Spanish should sound like.

Interpretive Reading

One thing that I was persuaded to read by a fellow student was Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, in Spanish.

This helped me the most as it made me constantly research what certain words were in Spanish, and eventually they would be engrained in my head. It was something that encouraged me to further study the language so I could better understand what I was reading.