This was the first recording of me speaking Spanish and was taken during the second week of Spanish class. Overall, I think I did pretty well with my pronunciation and recall of the words and phrases even though I was nervous prior to the recording. Going into the future I should keep in mind that this is the culmination of what is probably going to be the easiest week of Spanish, so I shouldn't get cocky. I did get a little nervous because there was a camera and I panicked a little but when my partner (almost) forgot one of the questions but we recovered.
Spanish Recording 2
In this recording I think my delivery of the questions from the last two weeks was much smoother and easier, and I was able to slip the new questions/answers from this week in quite well (but there is still room for improvement). I want to work on making the conversation feel more natural. Right now we're asking the questions in a way that would sound very robotic for a born Spanish speaker and I want it to be more natural. I think I've been looking forward to learning how to string together all the little things we learned in class and applying it in a real world situations. Coming into this class, I was very intimidated by the prospect of learning a new language. I mean for goodness sakes, I haven't even finished learning English yet! However, after starting this semester, I realized that learning a new language is very doable and the way we are learning seems to be very logical. My enthusiasm level, on a scale of 1-10, is hovering around a 6-7. I'm not super passionate about learning a new language, but I still find it interesting and engaging. I think that communicating in Spanish with ease is something that I aspire to be able to do, and it seems very conceivable.
Spanish Recording 3
This recording was interesting because we weren't just having hi/hello conversations, we actually made a script that could be about anything that we wanted (my partner and I chose Star Wars). I chose my partner because I had never worked with him and, in retrospect, I think it went pretty well. While practicing, we would just run through the script and then take a break and then practice again. For my partner, this strategy worked really well. I feel like if I forced him to practice for a long stretch of time, it would've frustrated both of us. I felt really good about the basic conversation in this recording; on a scale of 1-10, the basic conversation in this recording is a 9, and when I first started it was a 4-5. which is some nice improvement. For this whole week I've felt very comfortable with learning questions and answers, but I struggle with learning/applying vocabulary and conjugating verbs. For the midterm I want to offer a good script. I also want the conversation to be longer and feel more natural, which will come with practice.
Recording of Final
I felt pretty confident going into my final, the practice I had done with my partner had gone quite well, and I felt comfortable going off on tangents. My partner and I were motivated throughout the final prep time, so we didn't need to encourage or motivate each other too much, which was why we chose to be partners. The most useful thing we did to prepare was definitely compiling lists of useful words and practising using them, not only did this help with final prep, but it also helped expand our vocabularies. Another thing that was useful was practising outside of the classroom, both by myself and with my partner. On my own, I would pretend like someone else was there and I would have a conversation with them, and just made up what they would say. I also watched a movie in Spanish (I didn't listen to music/radio or watch any TV though) and I was surprised at how much I was able to follow along, and it helped my confidence with Spanish as well as helped expand my vocabulary. With my partner we would just have the conversation and then identify parts that needed improvement and worked on those. My goal for all the conversations throughout this semester is to be able to hold a conversation with a Spanish-speaker, and I think I accomplished that. Compared to the first day of class, I feel a lot more confident in my skills and would feel comfortable talking to a Spanish speaker, even if I've never met them. I think I would have the basic words, phrases, and conversational techniques down, but the more complicated stuff would require me incorporating some hand motions and stuff like that into the conversation. I would be interested in incorporating something other than politics as the central topic of a conversation/midterm/final, as politics doesn't interest me very much so I don't have much to say about it. I'd like to try talking about comic books in Spanish and see how that goes. We did implement one of the articles we read in our conversation, but as I said before, I don't have much to say about politics, so I didn't have much to say about the political article. All in all, my Spanish semester was pretty great, and I'm proud of my advancement in my language skills.
Spanish Recording 4 (After Final)
I chose to record my last recording after the final because I wanted to see how I'd do under less pressure and wiht a different person (as opposed to my partner, I practiced this one with the teaching assistant, Lee). I think feeling comfortable did affect my time, as it was around 3 minutes versus the 6-7 minute times I got with my partner, but I can chalk that up to not having practiced with Lee, plus not needing to have it be a certain length. I definitely felt less on edge during the conversation and it overall felt really solid. With my partner I kinda knew the direction the conversation would take, but with Lee it was different but I was still able to adapt and utilize my vocab. Overall, I'm really satisfied with this last recording, because it makes me feel confident in my skills of just picking up a conversation with anyone.