Spanish Reflection: The greatest tool I used to enhance my vocabulary was highlighting words I didn’t know and writing them down on a piece of paper with the translation and definition. This helped me because I reviewed the list almost everyday, and I just kept adding more words. I motivate myself by watching news videos, and reading Spanish articles. I encourage my classmates by helping them with their pronunciation so they can be confident and sound confident. My goal in these conversations is to eventually speak a few times, but with meaningful comments. I do not want to be saying simple things. I feel more comfortable speaking Spanish because I know that if I accidentally pronounce something wrong or mess up, people will get the general idea of what I was trying to say. I think I will be able to have a conversation with someone I’ve never met because I usually do anyways when I am outside of my house. I don’t have any other topics I’d like to discuss, maybe current situations happening in the world other than the election. I didn’t really have a choice picking my partner, because hispano hablantes were just going to have a group conversation. I have watched television in Spanish before. Ever since I was old enough to talk, I would sit in my mom’s room and listen to the news with her, I would ask her questions about it too. I liked watching TV in Spanish. I have never watched a movie in Spanish, but I have watched movies that have people speaking Spanish in them sometimes, but not the whole movie. I have listened to music in Spanish ever since I was born. I would listen to my family playing music in my kitchen, and to this day I still remember all the lyrics to some songs. Sometimes when we are driving to school, we have a Spanish radio playing the the background. I practice Spanish by continuing to speak with my family in 100% Spanish, and watching the news. I connected with the articles because some things they had written in them reminded me of a personal event. For some reason, I connected with the articles by putting myself in the person’s shoes.
Spanish Video 2 for Spanish Speakers I chose to work with my partner because since I know Spanish, I wanted to watch how her pronunciation got better. The only thing we did to practice was repeat our script to each other, over and over again. After we memorized and learned our script, we began to practice without looking at the script. I would say I am a 10. I feel more comfortable than I did in the beginning of the semester with basic conversations. I feel strongest in pronunciation, vocabulary, and verb conjugations. My goal is to be able to respond to the questions quicker for my next video for my midterm exam, because it takes me awhile to understand the question. I know Spanish fluently, so I can help someone who is not fluent with their pronunciation skills.
¿Qué piensas acerca del artículo? Yo pienso que Donald Trump tiene muchas ideas tontas.
¿Si fueras capaz de votar, votarías por él? ¿Por qué sí o no? No porque el quiere sacar a los mexicanos y a los que naciaren aqui, y le quiere poner un fin a la ciudadania por nacimiento.
¿Por qué la inmigración es tan controversial en los EEUU? La inmigracion es tan controversial en los EEUU porque muchos mexicanos vienen a los EEUU para tener una buena vida y para trabajar. Pero muchos Americanos no creen en eso, no quieren que haiga mexicanos en los EEUU.
Spanish 1 video: I enjoyed working on the video because the partner I chose was easy to work with. Since I speak Spanish and my partner doesn't it was difficult to help them remember. However, in the end my partner memorized and learned the basic conversation phrases we were taught the first 2 weeks of Spanish class. I did not like that we could not re-do our video because that put pressure on us. My partner and I knew everything we were supposed to say but that pressure made us not take it seriously. We were laughing through out the whole video, but I am confident that even though we messed up, we showed what we knew in Spanish.
I thought we would have a book that was at our reading level but just a little bit more difficult. This is what I thought because I knew us Spanish speakers weren't going to be just sitting around watching everyone else learn what we already know. Cien Años de Soledad is two levels above us Spanish speakers, because we are all around the same Spanish level. I first realized this book was going to be too much when we were assigned to read as much as we could in about 40 minutes. By the end of the class, I had only read up to the second page. It helped to annotate and highlight words we didn't know. However, we already read about the topic "Alchemy" in Humanities and we never really understood what it was. So it was even harder to read about it in Spanish.
I think Paper Towns will be a better choice, but still challenging for us because it is closer to our Spanish level, and we will actually be able to understand the topic. If we are able to understand this book, we can have discussions in class about it. On another note, it will be challenging, because most of us aren't used to reading books in Spanish. Also Paper Town's vocabulary level in English is already too difficult. It will give us an opportunity to be able to understand some words here and there.