Exploring Culture

Some of the things that helped me to gain a better cultural perspectives were just looking up something interesting about a Spanish-speaking country. I would look up foods, traditions, clothing, etc. Another thing that helped me a lot was socializing as well as trying native dishes with Work & Travel students from Latin American countries in the summer when I was working as a lifeguard.

Doing all those things helped me to open my eyes on the beautiful culture of Spanish-speaking countries. I realized how many different delicious dishes those countries had and how incredibly diverse the culture is. Even though I did not have any stereotypes against Spanish-speaking countries, obtaining more information, both from the internet and personally, built up even more solid understanding of the Spanish-speaking world.

Engaging in Communities

It is important to engage in communities because not only do you help and interact with the people in those communities, but you also learn something new from participating. It is always better to be active and learn something new.

As previously mentioned, during the summer I talked to a lot of Latin American lifeguards from different countries. They have basically formed their own community in the apartments they were living in, so I would go there often and talk to them or help them out and try different dishes that they were preparing.

Interpersonal Communication

While going through the Spanish 102 course, I had to participate in 2 15 minute long TalkAbroad conversations. The topics for both of them were mostly food. The first one was about food and maintaining health (healthy foods). The second one was just about the food itself and different types of dishes.

Participating in those 2 conversations has really helped my to practice my Spanish skills. I had a very limited opportunity to talk to Spanish-speaking people before (I could, but rarely). One of the things that has really helped me to go through both of those conversations was to just practice and memorize the new words before I could go and use them with a conversation partner. It is not so hard as long as you keep practicing.

Presentational Speaking

I have not done any presentational speaking activities this semester because I did not really have a chance to do so. All my routine is mostly going to ODU and then going back home, doing some chores, homework, then off to the gym and then back home.

Presentational Writing

In the Spanish course this semester we had to create a pamphlet on how to prevent or deal with any type of disease/sickness. I chose to make a pamphlet on how to prevent the flu.

I had to organize the pamphlet into different steps and recommendations how to avoid the flu. It had a total of 5 recommendations with a picture attached to each one, plus some additional sentences in addition to recommendations. It was not difficult for me to complete such an assignment because everything was laid out pretty simple.

Interpretive Listening

One of the Interpretive Listening activities I completed this semester was the listening section in Duolingo. It is very simple, but at the same time very fun and interesting to do and my Spanish level allowed me to easily practice listening there.

There is a “Story Mode” in Duolingo where you listen to a story and answer questions about the story along the way. It takes about 2-3 minutes to complete one story and it has a very simple question layout. One of the stories that I went through recently was about a couple going into a restaurant and ordering different items on the menu; the topic was related to food.

Interpretive Reading

One of the things I have done for Interpretive Reading was to just go into websites in Spanish and try to understand the things that are written in those websites.

Websites can be very different and not all have pictures in them; therefore it becomes more interesting to try and understand based on what can be understood what the website is about and what is written there.