Notes regarding credits...

This course consists of 40 hours of instruction. However, students may earn 45 hours by attending supplemental sessions and completing additional coursework. Please check with your home university to find out whether you need 40 or 45 hours to earn course equivalents.

Note: A placement exam will be required when you arrive on site.

High Intermediate

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of three semesters (or five quarters) of college-level Spanish. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

1. Introduction
The communicative competence of a speaker does not only consist of the dominance of the four linguistic skills, but also in the understanding of the idiomatic register that the language offers in the ability of generational, geographic parameters, and in recognition of the pragmatic elements that intervene in the speaking situation.
With this material, it is believed that the student will become familiar with colloquial Spanish and that they will be capable of discriminating the principle forms, topics, diastracticas and diafasicas of modern Spanish.
2. Syllabus
I Levels of linguistic formality and informality of Spanish.
1. The expression of advice: formal and informal resources
2. The transmission of messages: formal and informal uses.
3. Social resources for greeting, praising and reacting, in different situations of
communication.
4. Degrees of linguistic formality and informality in the expression of salutation
and farewell.
5. Resources to show agreement or disagreement in a formal and informal
manner.
6. Different registers in the expression of hypothesis and probability.

II. Colloquial Spanish
1. Colloquial expressions related with food.
2. Colloquial expressions related to dress. Colloquial expressions related to the human body. Colloquial expressions related to the animal world. Repeated language: a few colloquial Spanish proverbs.

III. Approximation to the main differences in Spanish.
1. Linguistic characteristics of Southern Spain.
2. Linguistic characteristics of central Spain.
3. Linguistic characteristics of American Spanish.

3. Activities
Obligatory readings: Juan Marse, El Amante Bilingue, Planeta, Barcelona, 1992. The objective of the reading is that the student, through the two types of speaking of the Catalonian protagonist (charnega and estandar), will understand the principle characteristics of southern and northern Spanish. The chapters of this work will be analyzed weekly in class. Once the Amante Bilingue reading is finished, the movie version of the work will be shown.

4. Evaluation
At the end of each thematic block, an exam will be taken of which its results will assume 25% of the final grade (3 exams= 75% of the grade as a whole). Class attendance and participation will be valued at 25%.

5. Bibliography
1. Works to consult:
ARIZA, M., Comentarios de textos dialectales, Madrid, Arco/Libros, 1994.
DOMÍNGUEZ, P., M. MORERA y G. ORTEGA, El español idiomático, Barcelona, Ariel, 1991.
SECO, M. y G. SALVADOR, La lengua española troy, Fundación Juan March, Madrid, 1995.
VAQUERO DE RAMÍREZ, M., El español de América. I Pronunciación, Ma-drid, Arco/Libros, 1996.

2. Obligatory reading texts :
MARSÉ, J., El amante bilingüe, Planeta, Barcelona, 1992.

3. Other documentation:
"Maneras de hablar", "Diálogos de jóvenes", "La lengua de la calle", sections of the magazine YO . An independent magazine for learning to speak Spanish in original version. (Granada, 1994-1997).