MLO 5: Cultural Praxis (Cultural Internalization and Language Immersion)
The student demonstrates that he or she has been actively immersed in and has internalized Hispanic culture.
There are three pathways by which this outcome can be fulfilled:
There are three pathways by which this outcome can be fulfilled:
- Pathway 1: By participating in a study-abroad program in a Spanish-speaking country for at least one semester. WLC's Spanish program has exchange agreements with the University of Aguas Calientes and the University of Queretero in Mexico, and the University of Córdoba in Spain. In addition, through CSU International Programs, you can study at universities in Madrid or Granada, Spain or in Santiago, Chile.
- Pathway 2: By living and working in a local heritage community over an extended period of time without interruption for at least two years.
- Pathway 3: By participating in and/or completing 10 of the following cultural learning scenarios with accompanying documentation, in the target language:
- Participate in service learning within a local heritage community for a minimum of eight weeks beyond the actual service learning requirement.
- Make a minimum of three home-visits in the local heritage community to interact and communicate with members of the Hispanic culture regarding topics of personal interest, the community, culture and language.
- Attend or view via media a minimum of 10 cultural events and /or social activities of Hispanic culture.
- Actively participate and/or perform in a school or heritage community event or celebration.
- Participate in a heritage-community project (of some duration) that requires proficiency in Spanish and knowledge of Hispanic cultures.
- Conducting a one hour in-depth interview with a speaker of Spanish, eliciting, in a conversational manner, comments of a biographical nature, cultural and social observations and anecdotal reflections.
- View and comment on 10 movie-length films produced within and about Hispanic culture.
- Participate at least five times in organized sports or recreation activities of Hispanic culture.
- Demonstrate cultural skills by making hotel reservations, ordering meals and shopping in stores or markets in heritage settings where Spanish is spoken. This objective is assessed by faculty.
Coming from a Hispanic background, I feel like I have completed Major Learning Outcome 5: Cultural Internalization and Language Immersion, quite successfully. Ever since I can remember my father always stressed the importance of being able to speak two languages, he always said, “A person that can speak two languages has the equivalent of two people”. I understood this as; a person that has the ability to communicate in multiple languages eradicates the necessity for needing two different people to communicate proficiently with a non-native speaker of a language, in other words there is no need for a translator. The ability to speak Spanish has proven to be an extremely important asset throughout my live and it has given me the ability to interact proficiently with Spanish speaking people. From a young age I began working in the fields of Central California, harvesting anything from, oranges, grapes, peaches and cherries. This cultural immersion has allowed me to be able to interact with people of different backgrounds, most of which have Spanish as a native tongue. Living in a predominantly Hispanic region, I have been exposed to Mexican traditions throughout my life; this has also contributed to fulfilling this MLO. This cultural immersion has allowed me to partake in many of the activities that have connection with religion, one of which being the Lent. In the catholic religion Lent is thought to be a sort of religious sacrifice made to show devotion in the religion. My family held this activity to hold great power and was always required to partake in the activity; we also made it a point to attend Spanish mass every Sunday, by doing this I believe that a cultural internalization was fulfilled. Throughout the years I also partook in other activities that could be seen as having cultural significance, like sport of soccer. In Mexican society soccer holds a high place and is thought to be the national sport, this participation in the sport is important because in most cases the entire team spoke Spanish while at practice and during competition. While in college I had the opportunity to participate in a community service outreach program that allowed me to further immerse myself in the culture and it required me to speak Spanish to communicate with the people. While fulfilling me community service I learned interacted with many different people from different places, mostly from Mexico. This service has proven important to me because it has allowed me to gain Cultural knowledge while at the same time allowing me to further immerse myself in the language.