Final Reflection Paper

[Thomas Dennis]

This semester I learned my strengths and weaknesses as a language learner and how to utilize and combat them respectively. I knew from the start of the semester that I have a harder time understanding spoken Spanish and formulating more advanced spoken responses on the spot, so those were the two skills that I focused on the most over the past few months. I actually found understanding the Spanish television that I used to practice my listening skills more challenging than I imagined, but at the same time it was an enjoyable experience. I have to keep Spanish subtitles on sometimes to help me understand what is being said, but only when the person speaking talks too quickly or is hard to understand. I am pretty satisfied with the improvement that I have seen in my listening comprehension skills this semester, and I believe that I have a solid base to continue improving my abilities in the future. In regards to my speaking ability, I am definitely more comfortable having a conversation in Spanish now than I was at the beginning of the semester. My vocabulary and use of more complex grammar still could use some improvement, but I am confident that I will be able to functionally converse in Spanish this summer when I am in Spain, which was one of my goals for the semester. I hope to continue improving my Spanish speaking skills in the future, so I am planning on speaking Spanish on a regular basis so that I don’t get rusty. The one component of language learning that I did not fully appreciate before this semester was the importance of your target language’s culture. The culture shock video along with our reading about the study of culture both were extremely valuable resources in my discovery of this concept. There are so many cultural components that contribute to the effect of a language, and I did not really understand this concept before watching, reading, and discussing these resources. Especially if you are trying to live in a country where your target language is widely spoken, a strong understanding of the culture is necessary to truly feel like a local. Aside from actually learning how to speak and listen to Spanish better, I want to learn more about Spanish culture in general in the future. I focused on Spain this semester, but I am interested in learning about the other Spanish speaking regions as well. Luckily there are a multitude of great resources online, so I don’t think this task will be too difficult. As far as learning the actual Spanish language better, I am confident that the skills I have gained in this course will allow me to craft a learning plan for my next step in learning Spanish, and maybe other languages too.