Course description
This course is designed to enhance oral communication skills in Spanish. It is aimed at developing speaking fluency and enhancing vocabulary learning by means of conversations, discussions, interactive presentations, readings, audio-visual materials and vocabulary building activities, among others.
This course is also intended to increase students’ community engagement and knowledge of the Hispanic culture and may include an experiential learning component.
Only Spanish is spoken in class.
Course content
1. Communicative activities in class (e.g. conversations, dialogues, group discussions, interviews, and interactive presentations);
2. Audiovisual materials analysis (e.g. films, short documentaries, videos showing authentic language interactions);
3. Oral communication tasks (e.g. describing events, experiences and wishes, and expressing opinions and doubt, agreement and disagreement);
4. Vocabulary use in context, including idiomatic and colloquial expressions;
5. Grammatical structures as introduced by the materials presented in class;
6. Cultural aspects of the Spanish-speaking world.
Learning activities
Class activities may include: lecture material presented by the instructor, in person, hybrid, or online synchronously or asynchronously; conversational activities; discussions of readings and audio-visual materials; oral and aural comprehension and pronunciation exercises; interactive oral presentations; review of syntactic and lexical structures; vocabulary building activities; one-on-one exchanges with native Spanish speakers; and participation in a community-engaged learning experience.
Means of assessment
Assessment will be based on course objectives and will be carried out in accordance with the ÌÇÐÄvlog´«Ã½Evaluation Policy. Instructors may use a student’s record of attendance and/or level of active participation in a course as part of the student’s graded performance. Where this occurs, expectations and grade calculations regarding class attendance and participation must be clearly defined in the Instructor Course Outline.
Evaluation will be based on learning outcomes and course content. Evaluation may include, but need not be limited to, the following tasks:
Class attendance and participation; individual or group oral presentations in class on an assigned topic; community engaged (experiential learning) hours and short reflections on the experience; vocabulary diaries and quizzes, and oral exams.
Sample grade breakdown for this course:
Participation, attendance and preparation: 20%
Oral presentations: 20%
Experiential learning participation and reflections: 20%
Diary of Expressions/Vocabulary: 10%
Mid-term oral exam: 15%
Final oral exam: 15%
Total: 100%
No single evaluation will be worth more than 20%.
Learning outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate oral and aural skills and comprehension abilities as independent users of the Spanish language;
2. Employ oral communication skills, i.e., intonation, pronunciation and conversation patterns, when interacting in the target language;
3. Describe experiences, events, wishes, opinions, and express doubt, agreement and disagreement;
4. Apply vocabulary and knowledge of idiomatic grammatical structures to a variety of conversational settings;
5. Recognize and identify different Spanish accents, social registers and regional uses, and use intonation and pronunciation patterns appropriately;
6. Demonstrate knowledge and awareness of the communities and the cultures of the Hispanic world.
Textbook materials
The instructor may choose either an intermediate level conversation textbook such as:
Sandstedt, L and Kite, R. (2013). Conversación y repaso: Intermediate Spanish (Eleventh edition). Boston: Cengage Learning;
or compile their own materials.