Chapter 6

Chapter 6 was all about food. i was able to learn about different things that I never new about before. I learned about the ordinal adjectives which are based on numbers. For instance, primero/a, secundo/a, tercero/a and etc. These ordinal adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun they modify. For example, primero, primera, primoeros, primeras. Another thing I learned was about the direct object pronouns. These direct object pronouns are me, te, lo, la, nos, los, las. This chapter also involved informal and negative commands. Negative commands such as "no te vayas" you have to drop the -er ending and ad the -ar ending. For the verbs that end in -ir or -er endings, you add the -ar ending. This chapter was a challenge for me because it was a lot of information to cover but I feel I still learned something.

Puerto Rico

I missed the guest lecture but enjoyed learning about the culture in Puerto Rico through Chapter 5. I find it interesting that even though Puerto Rico is apart of the United States, it is very different.

One thing I found interesting is that for All Saint's Day on January 5th, children in Puerto Rico put out cookies and milk before they go to bed. Then in the morning they open presents that were left under the beds. This tradition is really similiar to a christmas eve tradition in the US. On Christmas eve children put out cookies and milk for santa and then in the morning open the presents that santa left for them. Both traditions are similar, except they are for different holidays.

Puerto Rico is independent, but they are considered to be an U.S. territory. Despite having a U.S. citizenship, Puerto Ricans cannot particpate in US politcs and cannot vote in president relationships. They do have their own government and participate in that. I also find it interesting that even though Puerto Ricans are in a sense part of the U.S., many Puerto Ricans do not know English.

Chapter 6 and Final Class Impressiones

Chapter 6 emphasized food, food, and more food. Also discussed were direct object pronouns and ordinal adjectives. We kind of skipped informal commands and negative commands. I sure hope these topics aren't on the final examination. Its pretty cool being able to describe what you want to eat and the steps in making a recipe. Very useful information.

Overall this class was pretty tedious and overall pretty difficult. The material isn't whats difficult, its just the overall workload. Going to class and having long homework assignments and then having to go once a week to a lab where you do a worksheet assignment gets pretty aggravating. You start to ask yourself "when is it going to be over?" I like spanish, I really do, I just don't like the busy work that is involved in learning a new language. I would rather just speak it on a regular basis than sit down a do a worksheet. However, I do understand that worksheets and emphasizes must take place to properly learn the language.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 was really interesting to learn because in my previous spanish classes we didn't go into depth when it came to learning about food. I think this is probably one of the most aplicable chapter, well in our case anyway, because we're more likely to go to restaurants where they speak spanish opposed to a country.
We also learned about direct object pronouns in this chapter. I admit, that at first it was a little hard, but once I got the grasp of it, it wasn't as bad as it had seemed. I'm sure there are still a few tricks that I'm going to need to learn for the final however.
The final project was alot more fun then I thought it was going to be. Our class is so creative, unique, and funny, and I know that I'm going to miss going to spanish next semester. It was really amazing seeing how much effort everyone put into their spanish projects and the outcome of everyones efforts.
This has probably been one of the most educational classes to me so far at UT. There are always those classes where you learn things, but then you forget them, but I think the method of teaching used in this class was flawless. I really enjoyed this class this semester, and I will truly miss coming to spanish class Monday through Thursday.

Somebody gave me food poisoning

I would just like to start my blog saying that someone's food gave me food poisoning......I'm not sure what this blog is supposed to be focused on so Ill talk about what I've liked the most. The project was fun, I had no idea how messed up in the head Mona and Jordan are........I actually used some of the food words I've learned this morning at a mexican restaurant. I'm definitely not looking forward to the final though. I havent quite grasped Chapter 6 and I'm hoping I can in a week.

Blog 6

I'm going to go a little off topic on my blog and talk about something I've been thinking about when it comes to Latin American culture. Maybe I'll talk a little bit about food at the end (although, this definitely has to do with family, holdays, etc). One of my other classes this semester has been a psychology class dealing with Reasoning and Decision-Making. I've also had a Cross-Cultural Psychology class here at UT. In the former of the two, we just discussed how individualist cultures and collectivist cultures influence how decisions are made by members of each culture. It turns out it's a lot more complicated than "they do this and we do that" since you can manipulate people in lab settings to make decisions based on the other cultural tendancies, but the culture definitely has an influence on the decisions. Anyway, I'm getting off topic a bit. My point has to do with who we talked about when discussing the two different categories. The primary examples of "collectivist cultures" are generally east Asian cultures, and sometimes includes other parts of Asia and eastern Europe. The primary examples of "individualist cultures" are generally western European countries, the United States, Canada and Australia. Notice any countries missing? Africa, yes, but also Latin America. Mexico sometimes gets lumped in with the other North American countries, but overall the Latin American countries don't seem to get included with one cultural type or the other.

Going back to my Cross Cultural Psychology class, I'd have to wonder if maybe this is because the Latin American countries are kind of a combination of individualist and collectivist cultures that is harder to characterize simply. Based on prior experiences, these psychology classes, and SPN 506, it seems as though... at least where family is concerned... there may be somewhat of a colletivist focus. Family seems to hold a very high importance and, while that can be true in individualist cultures like those found in the United States, the bond seems to be stronger. On the other hand, there are still strong signs of individualist tendancies when it comes to competativeness for jobs and such.

Anyway, like I said, this was a little off the path of the current chapters but I thought it was an interesting observation. Oh well, back to studying!

Chapter Six has been my favorite Chapter in Spanish this semester. It is definitely because we learned all the vocabulary for foods and verbs on how to cook food and prepare foods as well. I think that this will be a very beneficial chapter for me because if I ever decide to travel to a foreign country where the primary language is Spanish, I will be able to order food and comprehend a menu at the restaurants. The verbs such as cortar(to cut) or mezclar(to mix) proved to be very helpful in terms of understanding and explaining a recipe.
Also in Chapter Six, we discussed our favorite movie. My favorite movie I talked about was "The Hurricane" starring Denzel Washington. It was kind of difficult to explain the movie in Spanish but I learned a lot of new terms that described film in Spanish such as la fotografia and la trama.
The most difficult aspect of Chapter Six was without a doubt the direct object pronouns. It took a lot of practice to try and figure these out. I also had trouble remembering which were direct and indirect.