Course Descriptions for
SPANISH 1001 s.a., 1002 s.a., 2001 s.a., and 2002 s.a.
Beginning and Intermediate
Spanish
Spanish
1001 s.a., 1002 s.a., 2001 s.a., and 2002 s.a. are immersion
courses in
Students
are required to learn all tenses and moods that they would learn if they were
sitting in an American classroom. They
have lessons in English on Power Point and a test on one tense each afternoon
to ensure that they master the material.
Students
immediately apply what they have learned because they live with Spanish
families, most of whom cannot speak English.
They eat breakfast and dinner with the families. They also go shopping and have lunch at
places where the employees do not speak English. They navigate the public transportation
system and wander through the city in search of museums or other places of
interest. In short, besides the
requisite classroom hours, they are applying what they learn on a daily
basis--a rarity in any
In
addition to the immediate application of language skills, students get hands-on
learning in the humanities. It is
impossible to separate a language from the culture of the country where it is
spoken, so all students are required to participate in two excursions each
week. Excursion sites include
Sagrada Familia, Güell Park,
Güell Palace, La Pedrera, and the Palau
de la Música Catalana, among others. Students who do not go out of town for the weekend
(many students opt to spend a weekend in
Spanish
2201 and 2202 are immersion courses in Barcelona, so all classes are taught
completely in Spanish from the very beginning.
Students are given a placement test at the language school in Barcelona,
so the content of the course depends on the background of the student and how
well he has mastered the material he has learned in his earlier courses. For that reason, students from a stronger
program are not held back by students from a weaker program, since those
students will be placed in different classes and given material at their own
level.
Students
learn new grammar in context. All
lessons are designed with the goal of enabling students to speak Spanish, not
take tests. Students learn the past
tense of "have," for example, not to be able to conjugate it
correctly on a test but in order to be able to say, "I had a problem at
the market yesterday." Frequently
students who have completed two or more years of Spanish in American classrooms
have good command of grammatical theory but relatively poor conversational
skills. In an immersion setting,
students are guided into using in conversation the grammar they have learned,
not simply into passing tests. Conversation topics are chosen to allow
students to
Students
immediately apply what they have learned because they live with Spanish
families, most of whom cannot speak English.
They eat breakfast and dinner with the families. They also go shopping and have lunch at
places where the employees do not speak English. They navigate the public transportation
system and wander through the city in search of museums or other places of
interest. In short, besides the
requisite classroom hours, they are applying what they learn on a daily
basis--a rarity in any
In
addition to the immediate application of language skills, students get hands-on
learning in the humanities. It is
impossible to separate a language from the culture of the country where it is
spoken, so all students are required to participate in a minimum of seven
excursions. Excursion sites include
Sagrada Familia, Güell Park,
Güell Palace, La Pedrera, and the Palau
de la Música Catalana, among others. Students who do not go out of town for the weekend
(many students opt to spend a weekend in