Following the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning the objectives of this first-year intensive Spanish language course are organized around five main areas:
COMMUNICATION: At the end of the SPAN 134 course students will have acquired a novice high/intermediate low proficiency level, which means they will be able to handle successfully a variety of basic communicative tasks necessary for survival in a Spanish speaking context.
At the end of Part I, students will be able to:
- Introduce themselves to others
- Give and request personal information, such as name, age, nationality, and profession.
- Describe themselves or others, giving information about their personality, family relationships, interests, and hobbies.
- Talk about travel and vacation, and ask questions about transportation and accommodation.
- Talk about shopping and stores, ask for the price of a product or service, and describe and value products, such as clothes and accessories.
- Talk about health, food, sports, and physical activities, identify body parts, describe good and bad health habits, and give suggestions for a healthy life.
- Talk about likes, dislikes, and preferences, talk about existence and location of places, express agreement and disagreement, express need and obligation, make recommendations and give advice, and talk about frequency and quantity.
- Grasp the main idea of and get some additional information from authentic written and oral texts focused on everyday topics. Students will develop listening and reading strategies, such as predicting content, recognizing cognates, guessing meaning from context, and using a bilingual dictionary.
- Write shorts texts dealing with everyday topics, such as a personal ad, a letter describing themselves, a note for a friend, or an email requesting basic information. Students will develop writing strategies to organize their information and ideas, connect their sentences, review their language use, and edit their own and other students’ work for content and organization.
At the end of Part II, students will be able to:
- Greet using tú and usted.
- Talk about professions, job skills, and the work environment.
- Write a letter to apply for a job.
- Give directions.
- Describe your house and its furniture.
- Talk about trips, transportation, itineraries, and activities related to travel.
- Request and give time and date. Situate actions in time and space.
- Ask questions and give recommendations.
- Talk about food, drinks, and restaurants.
- Order in a restaurant or bar.
- Give instructions to prepare food and share recipes. Talk about quantities, weights, and measures.
- Describe and compare cities and places: characteristics, services, weather, problems, etc.
- Express opinions, wishes, and preferences.
- Express agreement and disagreement.
- Make and defend a proposal.
- Talk about the past and the circumstances surrounding it.
- Narrate historical and socio-political events.
- Relate biographical data.
At the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Talk about past historical and socio-political events
- Relate biographical data
- Write a narrative including the circumstances surrounding the events
- Express cause and consequence
- Talk about health
- Describe accidents, symptoms, and illnesses
- Give advice, recommendations, and warnings
- Talk about learning experiences and reason to learn Spanish
- Discuss best learning strategies and resources
- Talk about likes and dislikes
- Express sensations, feelings, difficulties, and value judgments using verbs like gustar
- Describe people’s personalities
- Make direct and indirect questions
- Talk about movies, television, arts, and entertainment
- Discuss, plan, and agree on leisure activities
- Extend, accept, or reject invitations and proposals
- Use the present subjunctive to state opinion, probability, or doubt
CULTURES: Students will have gained a deeper knowledge and understanding of the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world. They will be more acquainted with the places where Spanish is spoken, will have explored some of the main cultural, social, and historical events of the Hispanic world, and will have increased their awareness of the U.S. Hispanic/Latino communities.
CONNECTIONS. Students will be able to acquire new information and reinforce their knowledge of other disciplines through the Spanish language.
COMPARISONS. Students will have developed new insights into the nature of language and culture that will allow them to establish comparisons not only between languages, but also between the Hispanic cultures and their own.
COMMUNITIES. Students will be able to use the Spanish language to participate in Hispanic communities at home and around the world.