SPAN 302: Reflective Narrative
There were two main topics in this course. One of them was the history of our language, where we identify its origins and evolution during time, and the second one was the phonetic part where we learned the characteristics of pronunciation and sound of our language.
The origin of our language has its roots in Latin, but it suffered a lot of influence from many other cultures. Spain was first populated by people who spoke different local dialects, but when the Roman Empire conquered the peninsula, Latin was the official tongue. After the fall of the Roman Empire, different cultures from the north of the European continent invaded Spain and the language suffered the influence of the northern dialects. Once Spain consolidated itself as a country, it suffered the invasion of Arabic forces, and now some Mediterranean languages changed Spanish. Finally, the Spaniards re-conquered its own land, and they kept their own language but with all those previous influences. During the time of exploration of America, Spaniards conquered most part of the American Continent and our language suffered a new influence with the dialects of indigenous people; therefore, the Spanish language has been modified in very different eras by different cultures. Another important characteristic of our language is that it is different in every geographical place. That is the reason for the different accent in various regions and countries, which that makes Spanish unique in many places on earth.
The phonetic part of this course was a complete new way to see our language. We were introduced to the International Phonetic Alphabet and learned how to write some sentences using this method. We discovered the different sounds and some of the reasons why speakers from other languages have difficulty pronouncing our language correctly (for similar reasons we have difficult pronounce their languages) and the consequence of that is the language accent. We were asked to find a student whose first language was different than Spanish, recorded him/her reading a fragment of a novel or poem, and tried to identify the words that he/she couldn’t pronounce correctly. Then we used the knowledge we learned in class, and helped the student to improve his/her pronunciation.
This course was very useful for those that are planning to continue a teaching career. Many of the tools that we learned in this course would help us to teach our students about sounds and pronunciation. Also, it is good to understand the origins of many of the words that our Spanish language.
The origin of our language has its roots in Latin, but it suffered a lot of influence from many other cultures. Spain was first populated by people who spoke different local dialects, but when the Roman Empire conquered the peninsula, Latin was the official tongue. After the fall of the Roman Empire, different cultures from the north of the European continent invaded Spain and the language suffered the influence of the northern dialects. Once Spain consolidated itself as a country, it suffered the invasion of Arabic forces, and now some Mediterranean languages changed Spanish. Finally, the Spaniards re-conquered its own land, and they kept their own language but with all those previous influences. During the time of exploration of America, Spaniards conquered most part of the American Continent and our language suffered a new influence with the dialects of indigenous people; therefore, the Spanish language has been modified in very different eras by different cultures. Another important characteristic of our language is that it is different in every geographical place. That is the reason for the different accent in various regions and countries, which that makes Spanish unique in many places on earth.
The phonetic part of this course was a complete new way to see our language. We were introduced to the International Phonetic Alphabet and learned how to write some sentences using this method. We discovered the different sounds and some of the reasons why speakers from other languages have difficulty pronouncing our language correctly (for similar reasons we have difficult pronounce their languages) and the consequence of that is the language accent. We were asked to find a student whose first language was different than Spanish, recorded him/her reading a fragment of a novel or poem, and tried to identify the words that he/she couldn’t pronounce correctly. Then we used the knowledge we learned in class, and helped the student to improve his/her pronunciation.
This course was very useful for those that are planning to continue a teaching career. Many of the tools that we learned in this course would help us to teach our students about sounds and pronunciation. Also, it is good to understand the origins of many of the words that our Spanish language.
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