This week I chose to have my language practice session with my multilingual amiga, Nikki.  She holds a Spanish minor and has taught Spanish tutoring sessions for USF students.  

Our language practice lasted two hours. I do not know how long we actually spoke Spanish. I need to start using a stopwatch so I can get an exact count of how long I am speaking Spanish, or should I say Spanglish– and the Span part es muy malo.

I would have a video of our conversation but it was late and neither of us were in the mood to be on camera.

After our conversation I began rethinking my plans for this summer. The first time I went to Spain I was surrounded with bilingual students and there were few times I ventured solo. This summer I will have to rely on myself.

CD 4 Disc 1

I am still reviewing level four lesson one in the program. One problem is that I rather listen to music than my audio tour guides. Also, I find that while listening to the lesson my thoughts stray to my projects and test due for the next week, or I need to have my full attention on driving. By the time I leave school, my brain feels fried from being in classes and studying all day.

This week I focused on words I am familiar with but tend to pronounce incorrectly. For instance, I usually forget to pronounce problema like it sounds in Spanish.  I tend to say it how it would be pronounced if it were an English word.  

Professional writing is concise, to the point and follows inverted pyramid style to ensure that the most pertinent information is read first and the reader understands the message.

E-mail does not offer the luxury of interpersonal interpretation through body language or tone of voice so the sender needs to ensure that the reader will not misinterpret the message. Without face-to-face communication, humor, irony, sarcasm, and wit are often misinterpreted or not understood.

When it comes to general professional e-mail etiquette, Yale University warns senders not to forward a colleague’s e-mail without permission, and pay attention to whether reply or reply all is being used.

It is not polite to make people wait for a response. If unable to respond with in two business days within two business days tell the person that you are looking in to the situation or you will get back with them soon.

Be sure to change your contact information according to the person or company that is receiving the message. If you are responding to an e-mail, include the original message in the reply, so the receiver can put your e-mail into the correct context. Some e-mail servers do thing automatically.

“Don’t just rely on e-mail because they can be lost, so follow-up should be done via the telephone or regular mail,” said Carrie Payne, writer for  job web.com

The Claris Guide of E-mail Etiquette offers valuable tips when e-mailing internationally.

• When sending an international email that includes dates and times be sure to translate using date and time conventions for the appropriate country.
• Provide proper international dialing telephone codes and contact information.
• When using currency figures, list both countries’ currencies and the terminology used in the country that the financial dealing is taking place in.

And of course, write without punctuation, grammar and spelling mistakes. These can be costly when trying to obtain sales, new customers or pitching media.

CD 4,  disc 1

I started higher in the program since I know some Spanish. I poped in the CD and found myself in Lima, Peru.  First, my audio tour guides and I were in the Lima airport and were asked questions about the things our suitcases. Then we went to restaurants I learned about typical Peruvian meals.

I learned the names of fruit: naranja, manzana, pina, fresa, frambuesa, platano, cereza, uvas. I also learned words that could be used when describing fruit such as redondas (round), larga (long), adrento (inside), and afuera (outside). Other notable words are jugo (juice),  gaseosa (soda), and  dulce (sweet).

 Then I reviewed the difference between this, that, these and those.

This: este y esta

These: estas y estos

That: ese y esa,

Those: esos y esas

That over there: aquel y aquella

Those over there: aquellos y aquellos

Lo and la are used as direct object pronouns, so the object does not have to be restated. If one person asks te gusta café, then a response could be si, lo gusta.  The reply says yes I like it, rather than saying yes I like coffee.  

Primero estoy en la aerupuerto y hablo sobre las cosa en mi maleta. Entonces ir a las restaurants y aprendar sobre platos typicos de Peru. Yo Practicar los nombres de las frutia y  ese, este y aquello. Tambien to aprendar  pronombres de complimento directo.

Ballet Hispanico, a famous dance company located in New York, performed at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. The ballet was excellente, however I was not expecting the show to be modern.  The dancers held salsa lessons after the show and opened the dance floor for novice as well as experienced dancers.

Ballet Hispanico

Blogging allows practitioners to understand the company’s reputation and consumer preferences, spot emerging trends, and monitor competition. Darren Rowse suggests in his Understanding PR People article, to use blog search engine sites such as Technocratic, Google Blog Search, Blogrolls and mediamaponline to find influential bloggers and blog topics.

Blogs provide a personal link with current and prospective customers. The conversations promote trust and build influential relationships. A company can become transparent through addressing important business related issues.

Media are always looking for new story ideas online. Writing about company news, industry trends and business and economics issues promotes the blog is a source of news stories and possible interviews. B.L. Ochman notes, in The PR lessons of a Clueless Blog Pitch, that public relations practitioners are pitching bloggers just as they pitch traditional media outlets, but bloggers are more likely to publicly ridicule poorly presented pitches. Some bloggers have hall of shame pages displaying bad or irritating PR pitches. Ochman suggests running pitch content through Bullfighter to rid jargon and puff; explain how the idea or person you are pitching ties into a current news item or a trend.

Brian Solice notes on his PR 2.0 blog that many companies are in fear of their public relations team blogging. Some companies worry about practitioners saying thing that could damage relationships or cause legal damage. Companies need to be visible on the Internet including the blogosphere in order to reach targeted and untargeted audiences. Practitioners need to remind companies that the job of the PR practitioner is to reach objectives while make they company look good, so there is nothing to fear.

Report: the-green-era-pdf1 

Ethnography: Narrated photos and captions located on the right side of blog.

Spanish Enhancement Experiment

My public relations writing class is conducting social experiments and blogging about them in order to enhance our social media skills. We were instructed to pick an experiment that we could do for the entire semester.  I have a limited amount of time so I chose an experiment I could do in my car on the way to school. The variable in the experiment is me because I do not know how dedicated I will be– Let’s think positivily.

 I will go to Spain this summer so my social experiment will attempt to enhance my Spanish language skills for my trip. The blog will detail my weekly conversations and practices.

Goal                                                                                                                 My goal is to listen to Spanish language enhancement CD’s in my car for 30 minutes, five days a week. I will hold a 20 minute conversation in Spanish with a different person each week.  I will try to incorporate videos or picturesto keep things interesting. Sorry, it doesnt get amy more scientific than this.

Why would anyone want to read a blog about a Spanish language experiment that has no scientific basis whatsoever?                         

Well, not many people would want to read this, probably not even my mother. I doubt my professor will actually read through all of the posts. However, I could see someone wanting to learn another langue having a curiosity of how effective the audio CD’s are.  Every one is different but by reading some of my posts one could get insight about issues they might have.

What do I think of the audio program and how does it work?             

April 12, 2009- The audio program I am using is Onlingo. It might be tougher for someone who has never taken a language class. I have taken two classes in college and two classes in high school. Although, in high school I wasn’t interested in learning Spanish so didn’t learn too much. What I have learned in college was very useful for helping me understand the concepts. There are some subjects that Onlingo could have elaborated on yet in other areas it expanded beyond my previous knowledge.  I think that the best part of the program is that I am able to hear the sections over and over. I can rewind as many times as needed and I get to hear how the words are pronounced, rather than trying to pronounce the words on my own. (People say that Spanish words are pronounced just how they are spelled, but I disagree— plus I have a huge problem with thinking “English.”) There are supplemental books that go over all the dialogues which really help when I can’t understand what is being said. There are also DVD’s with it but mine were gone because I got the program from a friend.

According to a survey of 297 communications professionals conducted by the Society of New Communications Research, 78 percent use blogs, 63 percent use online video, 56 percent use online social networks and 49 percent use podcast in their company’s communications initiatives. Other social media such as wikis and photo sharing are also heavily used. Social media is being used to determine strategies, test ideas, gain feedback, personalize relationships, create conversation, influence and persuade, and position opinion leader and expert roles. Practitioners rate program plan’s effectiveness through web traffic counters, search engine ranking, trackbacks, posts and comments, incoming links and RSS feed numbers. The industry is seeing an increase of awareness tracking by social media tools rather than traditional media tracking. However there are no criteria ranking influence on bloggers, online communities and the like.

Jason Falls’ article tilted Social Media is the Responsibility of Public Relations covers the point that in many companies  social media is under the IT department. Falls said that social media is a message that needs to be crafted by trained professionals. He also notes that many marketers, journalists and PR people do not have the technical skills, so hiring an IT person to assist with production is a good idea.

Communicators need to know the social media world and those who do not can learn from instructional blogs such as Chris Brogan’s 50 Ways to Use Social Media. Brogan suggests studying admirable social media work done by others and attending social media workshops.