Guía de Supervivencia/Survival Guide
Project Reflection
The survival guide project was centered on the creation of an in-depth guide to many different aspects of traveling in a foreign, Spanish speaking country. My group focused on Peru, and specifically Arequipa, Peru, a fairly common tourist destination. The first step of this project was to research and write the survival guide. I was responsible for writing a section about transportation, tourist attractions, and dining options in Arequipa. I also wrote the bibliography and found maps of the area. Each section included information, vocabulary, and a dialogue. My partner wrote two other sections along with an introduction and cover page. We combined our work for the final survival guide. After that was finished, we were supposed to select one of our dialogues and expand it four our skit. We chose to use the tourist attractions scenario and expanded it to make an interesting skit. The final step was to memorize the lines and preform our skit live at exhibition.
During the researching process, I learned a lot about Arequipa. Mostly I learned about the Arequipa area. This was interesting because usually when talking about Peru, you learn about Lima or Cusco or Machu Picchu. I’d never heard about Arequipa, so it was cool to learn about something new. I felt like I didn’t learn a whole lot about Peru’s culture because I was researching on the topic of tourism. That being said, I did get to learn a lot about the kinds of things you can do in Arequipa. For example, I did my dialogue for my attractions scenario on Colca Canyon, which is Peru’s third most popular tourist destination. It’s twice the depth of the Grand Canyon. Before doing this project, I’d never even heard of Colca Canyon. This is just one example of the many things that I learned during the researching process.
Aside from learning about Peru and Arequipa, I think that the biggest benefit of this project was the practice speaking Spanish. During Spanish exhibitions, we rarely get to speak in Spanish. I think that this always takes away from the exhibition experience. It’s always kind of odd to be presenting a Spanish project to an English audience using English. This project, and especially this exhibition, was different in that we spoke in Spanish. I’d never really made any sort of public presentation to a formal audience in Spanish before, and while a skit might not be the most serious type of presentation, I think it was a very valuable experience. Not only that, but it was fun to practice and preform a skit rather than stand by an essay or painting. I always prefer live performance exhibitions, and this one was no exception.
The survival guide project was centered on the creation of an in-depth guide to many different aspects of traveling in a foreign, Spanish speaking country. My group focused on Peru, and specifically Arequipa, Peru, a fairly common tourist destination. The first step of this project was to research and write the survival guide. I was responsible for writing a section about transportation, tourist attractions, and dining options in Arequipa. I also wrote the bibliography and found maps of the area. Each section included information, vocabulary, and a dialogue. My partner wrote two other sections along with an introduction and cover page. We combined our work for the final survival guide. After that was finished, we were supposed to select one of our dialogues and expand it four our skit. We chose to use the tourist attractions scenario and expanded it to make an interesting skit. The final step was to memorize the lines and preform our skit live at exhibition.
During the researching process, I learned a lot about Arequipa. Mostly I learned about the Arequipa area. This was interesting because usually when talking about Peru, you learn about Lima or Cusco or Machu Picchu. I’d never heard about Arequipa, so it was cool to learn about something new. I felt like I didn’t learn a whole lot about Peru’s culture because I was researching on the topic of tourism. That being said, I did get to learn a lot about the kinds of things you can do in Arequipa. For example, I did my dialogue for my attractions scenario on Colca Canyon, which is Peru’s third most popular tourist destination. It’s twice the depth of the Grand Canyon. Before doing this project, I’d never even heard of Colca Canyon. This is just one example of the many things that I learned during the researching process.
Aside from learning about Peru and Arequipa, I think that the biggest benefit of this project was the practice speaking Spanish. During Spanish exhibitions, we rarely get to speak in Spanish. I think that this always takes away from the exhibition experience. It’s always kind of odd to be presenting a Spanish project to an English audience using English. This project, and especially this exhibition, was different in that we spoke in Spanish. I’d never really made any sort of public presentation to a formal audience in Spanish before, and while a skit might not be the most serious type of presentation, I think it was a very valuable experience. Not only that, but it was fun to practice and preform a skit rather than stand by an essay or painting. I always prefer live performance exhibitions, and this one was no exception.
Periodismo (Newspaper) Project
Project Reflection: Periodismo
We’ve been working on our Newspaper project for about a month. In the beginning of the project, we all chose different countries. My group chose to focus on Spain. After that, each group member had to write either a feature article or an ad. I wrote a feature article about a Spanish ultra-runner who had recently set a speed record on the Matterhorn. The rest of my group wrote articles about pop culture and technology and an ad about the bus system in Spain. This initial section of the project was completed before winter break. After break, we had to compile all of our articles in to a single “newspaper.” There were several different jobs during this part of the project as well. I was in charge of layout while my group members wrote more short columns like weather, horoscopes, comics, and recipes. The final product was a three-page newspaper written completely in Spanish.
I connected to this complicated process mostly in the first half of the project. In this part of the project, I was able to choose my topic, so I chose something that interested me: ultra-running. In this way, I was able to stay interested in the project and its research much more than I could’ve if I was studying something that wasn’t as interesting to me. My greatest moment during the project was probably my research. As I said, I was truly interested in my topic, so while some of my classmates had a hard time staying on task during research time, I was able to focus on my project very well. This helped me have a very well researched article that I actually enjoyed writing. This was very different from my experience in the past with writing in Spanish. I’ve never had a subject that I was really passionate about before, so my connection with this project was much deeper than my connection to some of the other projects I’ve completed in my various Spanish classes throughout the years.
Without a doubt, the hardest part of this project was the group work involved with making the newspaper during the beginning of second semester. I thought that doing the layout of a newspaper wouldn’t be too hard, but I hadn’t reckoned with the complicated formatting in Publisher, the program that we used to make our papers. I had endless problems trying to figure out how the program worked and how to squeeze all of my work and my peers work on to two pages. This process was made harder by the fact that I had to start the layout while my peers were still finishing up their short columns. I had space laid out for all of them, but it almost always ended up being too small. So, once all of the short columns were in, I had to go back to the drawing board with my layout. I eventually managed to fit everything on three pages and was all ready to turn it in when I figured out that I’d done the whole layout on the wrong size of paper. At that point, it was too late to completely reformat a third time, so I had to turn it in as it was. This process was very frustrating and challenging, but I do think that I learned something from it.
Overall, I think that that thing is that I am somewhat of a perfectionist. I also was reminded that I’m not a huge fan of group work, but I already knew that about myself. The thing that I learned that was completely new was that there are times when I have to accept that my final product isn’t perfect. I’ve always had a high standard for myself, but with this project, I think I took it a little too far. When I learned that I’d done the whole paper on the wrong size of paper, I got really stressed at first and tried to reformat the whole paper. I actually didn’t have time to fix the entire paper, but I didn’t accept that fact until I turned it in. I was worrying about it constantly and trying to think of how I could solve the issue, but in the end, it was more important just to accept that I was going to have to turn in the paper as it was.
Now that I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on current events in Spain, I have found many ways that this knowledge is valuable as part of the language learning experience. I actually realized its significance in humanities class. My teacher was talking about language, and she said something that really made me connect back to this project: “language transmits culture.” Soon thereafter, I made the connection to Spanish class. Language transmits culture, so no language learning class should be complete without learning some culture. In addition, I would argue that the inverse is true too: if language transmits culture, then to a point, culture also transmits language. Spanish culture and language are very closely related, and I have come to understand that relation much more through this project.
I connected to this complicated process mostly in the first half of the project. In this part of the project, I was able to choose my topic, so I chose something that interested me: ultra-running. In this way, I was able to stay interested in the project and its research much more than I could’ve if I was studying something that wasn’t as interesting to me. My greatest moment during the project was probably my research. As I said, I was truly interested in my topic, so while some of my classmates had a hard time staying on task during research time, I was able to focus on my project very well. This helped me have a very well researched article that I actually enjoyed writing. This was very different from my experience in the past with writing in Spanish. I’ve never had a subject that I was really passionate about before, so my connection with this project was much deeper than my connection to some of the other projects I’ve completed in my various Spanish classes throughout the years.
Without a doubt, the hardest part of this project was the group work involved with making the newspaper during the beginning of second semester. I thought that doing the layout of a newspaper wouldn’t be too hard, but I hadn’t reckoned with the complicated formatting in Publisher, the program that we used to make our papers. I had endless problems trying to figure out how the program worked and how to squeeze all of my work and my peers work on to two pages. This process was made harder by the fact that I had to start the layout while my peers were still finishing up their short columns. I had space laid out for all of them, but it almost always ended up being too small. So, once all of the short columns were in, I had to go back to the drawing board with my layout. I eventually managed to fit everything on three pages and was all ready to turn it in when I figured out that I’d done the whole layout on the wrong size of paper. At that point, it was too late to completely reformat a third time, so I had to turn it in as it was. This process was very frustrating and challenging, but I do think that I learned something from it.
Overall, I think that that thing is that I am somewhat of a perfectionist. I also was reminded that I’m not a huge fan of group work, but I already knew that about myself. The thing that I learned that was completely new was that there are times when I have to accept that my final product isn’t perfect. I’ve always had a high standard for myself, but with this project, I think I took it a little too far. When I learned that I’d done the whole paper on the wrong size of paper, I got really stressed at first and tried to reformat the whole paper. I actually didn’t have time to fix the entire paper, but I didn’t accept that fact until I turned it in. I was worrying about it constantly and trying to think of how I could solve the issue, but in the end, it was more important just to accept that I was going to have to turn in the paper as it was.
Now that I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on current events in Spain, I have found many ways that this knowledge is valuable as part of the language learning experience. I actually realized its significance in humanities class. My teacher was talking about language, and she said something that really made me connect back to this project: “language transmits culture.” Soon thereafter, I made the connection to Spanish class. Language transmits culture, so no language learning class should be complete without learning some culture. In addition, I would argue that the inverse is true too: if language transmits culture, then to a point, culture also transmits language. Spanish culture and language are very closely related, and I have come to understand that relation much more through this project.
Dia De los Muertos (Day of the Dead)
For this project, we learned about the celebration of the day of the dead, a holiday that takes place from November 1-3rd and is celebrated in much of Latin America. Our project was a two paragraph writing (in Spanish) about a friend, family member, or pet that we had lost (below). We also created visuals about our chosen person (right). This project was exhibited on Monday, November 4th.
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Dia de los Muertos Writing
Mi abuelo, Omer Allen Gianniny, nació el cinco de diciembre de 1925 y murió el treinta y uno de agosto de 2012. Él graduó de la universidad de Virginia con un título en ingeniería. Después de escuela, él sirvió en la marina para un año. Luego, el regresó a la universidad y recibió un licenciatura de ingeniería mecánica. Él fue a la marina otra vez para dos años y sirvió en el USS Remy. Después de servicio, regresó a Charlottesville, VA, donde su enseñaba en la universidad de Virginia. Allen y su familia vivían en Charlottesville por muchos años y Allen recibió muchos premios para su trabajo. Él viajaba mucho con su familia, y uno de sus pasiones iba fotografía. Tomaba muchas fotos de la naturaleza y arquitectura. Él y su esposa, Jean, tenían cinco niños: Don, Jim, Pete, Bob, y mi padre, Gary.
Una memoria que yo tengo de mi abuelo es cuando nosotros fuimos a acampar en las arboledas. Fuimos caminar en un calle detrás de las árboles hacía un estanque. Mis padres y mi abuela fueron allí también. Este memoria me hace feliz porque es mi memoria más vívido de mi abuelo. Habían vides en los árboles, y nosotros columpiaban en las vides. Este fue antes de mi abuelo contrajo un enfermedad. Después de este, mi abuelo no hablaba mucho, pero yo aún tengo muchas memorias buenas de él.
Una memoria que yo tengo de mi abuelo es cuando nosotros fuimos a acampar en las arboledas. Fuimos caminar en un calle detrás de las árboles hacía un estanque. Mis padres y mi abuela fueron allí también. Este memoria me hace feliz porque es mi memoria más vívido de mi abuelo. Habían vides en los árboles, y nosotros columpiaban en las vides. Este fue antes de mi abuelo contrajo un enfermedad. Después de este, mi abuelo no hablaba mucho, pero yo aún tengo muchas memorias buenas de él.
Dia de los Muertos Project Reflection
I learned a lot about Day of the Dead and Spanish during this project. One of the most memorable things that I learned was where Day of the Dead had its origins. Day of the dead is a combination of Spanish (Catholic) traditions and Aztec traditions. The catholic side brings things like saints in to the holiday, while the Aztec side brings in the art and celebration of death. If I was going to do this project again, I think I would focus more on my art. I am very happy with my final product, but it would’ve looked better if it had a background of some sort. I think it would have looked the best if I could’ve mounted it on black poster board or some other similar material. The hardest part about this project for me was choosing a relative to do the project about. I know a few people who have passed away, but it was hard for me to choose out of those people.
Ojos y Orejas (Eyes and Ears) Project
For this project, we created a visual piece representing our learning styles. I chose to use a concept map for my visual. The picture below is hard to read, but the overall idea is that in order for me to learn Spanish effectively, I need to connect my ideas to nature, use motions for word associations, and organize things like studying and practicing into logical outlines. I will try to get a better version of the picture uploaded soon.