Final Reflective Essay

As someone who always has a lot of interests in other languages and cultures, this class has been a blessing in disguise this semester. Getting to collaborate with my peers while also learning has been a lovely experience, and I think it was a good way to end my final Spanish class here at GCSU.

I like to think that my cultural and linguistic development now far surpasses what it was at the beginning of the semester, and for that I am grateful. From reading the textbook, to our in class projects, to working with each other to do all of the activities with board-writing and our lively class debates, it has truly been a joy. I feel like with our lectures about certain aspects of countries and how it would relate back to the current unit, we all felt like we could participate, and that helped us feel like our learning was more hands on.

Arguably the weakest part of my portfolio would definitely be the seemed lack of information physically in it, but I designed it that way after being informed that we could present our portfolio, because especially when I as a person can create better when I don’t have to shove information into a presentation, and can instead expand to my heart’s content, because I am proud of what I have created and thus excited to teach more about it. (I also struggle to condense my thoughts to fit my template sometimes, so that is helpful as well)

Probably the strongest part then would be how much research in, sometimes i read many things and so I know all the information but I really struggle with actually putting it down into words in a way that makes sense to others. I also have a tendency to forget things and when giving a presentation orally, it is far easier to revert back to a topic and add a footnote than it would be if someone were simply to read my website on their own. Part of the design is my ability to elaborate, and the two videos I put into the presentation will also help with that I hope, to hear experts confirm the information I am saying might make a listener more likely to believe me and be interested in learning more.

Mostly, I think that I have learned several skills in this class that I hope to carry on to other areas of my major. The ability to communicate is incredibly important in every field, but it is far more a test of my patience when I must do so… in another language. A language I am not fully comfortable speaking in, to boot. We as a class learned patience with each other, as well as great collaborative skills due to sometimes being each others’ only resources for an activity or such. All in all, I think it was a successful semester and I learned a LOT.