Intoduction

I enrolled in the Spanish courses because I wanted to learn this beautiful language. I started studying it all the way in middle school, but it did not last very long since it was only in 7th grade. I got back into it when I started studying it again in high school, which proved to be quite successful and interesting. After graduating, I decided I would keep in studying Spanish, so I could keep on improving my skills. A lot of people in the Americas speak Spanish, so learning it could be very useful in the future.

Experience

Some of the most extensive times I had to utilize my Spanish skills outside of classroom were when I was going to Mexico. Up to this moment, I’ve been there 3 times, and every time I would use it either to ask for directions or to agree on a price with a taxi driver in Cancun. I would like to keep learning more words, so that way I can feel myself completely free whenever I go t a Spanish-speaking country such as Mexico. I definitely think that in order to learn a language, you need to communicate with its carriers, otherwise it can’t really be considered as learned.

Transfer

Another one of the reasons why I’m taking Spanish is because for my major (International Studies) 4 semesters of foreign language are mandatory, and since I wanted to study Spanish anyways, it aligned with my interest.

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.

It was always interesting to listen to the guys from Latin America to talk about their culture. I had some chances to try their food as well since they would cook it during some parties. It was very delicious. The guys helped me to understand way more about the Latin American culture than I knew before.

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.

While I was not able to participate in Spanish-speaking communities much in the recent time, I did work as a lifeguard last summer0 as previously mentioned, and the there was quite a big community of Latin American guys who also came to work as lifeguards. It was very fun to spend time with them.

Interpersonal Communication

While going through the Spanish 102 course, I had to participate in 2 15 minute long TalkAbroad conversations. I did both of those conversations with a guy from Costa Rica named Kevin. He is a very good conversation partner and is always eager to talk about his home country as well as hear what I have to say. Considering the fact that I’m one of the few Russian people in this field, I always tell him more and more interesting facts about my country. The first conversation was about tourism and clothing styles. We both talked about our countries (I always try to talk more about my city) and also talked about different clothes we usually wear. The second conversation was about immigration patterns in our countries. Kevin told me that a lot of people from the smaller surrounding countries around Costa Rica try to get there and possibly go elsewhere from that point on. I told him about the immigration patters in Russia. Then we talked about art, and this is where I really stepped in since Saint Petersburg has dozens of different museums that I told him about.

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. This class also focused more on different types of verbs and tenses, so I had to memorize them as well.

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 course this semester we had to write a paragraph recommending a person that we chose his type of clothing and outfits as well as design and submit the pictures of that clothing together with the paragraph. It was quite interesting.

While I’m not a very good artist, I was still able to draw some good clothing pieces. This assignment helped me to learn the subject pronouns better since I used such phrases as “yo le recomiendo”, etc.

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. There are different stories you can listen to.

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. Usually you can pretty much sum uo the whole idea by looking at some particular words/phrases.

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.