Intermediate Spanish Language and Chilean Culture

Course Description

Spanish Language and Chilean Culture
90 hours of instruction

Course Description: The course Spanish Language and Chilean Culture, intermediate level, integrates language and culture with the fundamental objective of promoting total immersion for the student.

General Objective: Improve the communicative intercultural competence of the student in regards to the four linguistic abilities: Oral and written comprehension, and oral and written expression.

Specific Objectives:

- Develop the ability of oral expression in regard to descriptive texts, argumentative narratives.
- Develop the ability of understanding oral texts of a descriptive, narrative and argumentative character of medium difficulty.
- Develop the ability to understand written text of a descriptive, narrative and argumentative character of medium difficulty.
- Develop the ability of written expression in regards to descriptive, narrative and argumentative texts of medium difficulty.
- Involve the student with the concept of intercultural themes through means of fieldwork.

Contents

- Revision of the structural and linguistic elements involving descriptive texts and narratives.
- Argumentative text. Indicative mode, verbal tenses (simple and compound past)
- Subjunctive Mode: noun clauses (1) adjetive clauses (1) adverb clauses (1)
- The Conditional
- Conjunctions (causal, certainty, conditional, consequence, opposition, introduction to opinions)
- Notion of registration: Pronominal systems of Spanish. Chilean Spanish vs. ?Standard Spanish?. Sociolinguistic focus.
- Idioms and identifying common uses.
- Communicative environments present in daily life of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar (academic, family and entertainment environments). Methods of interaction. Comparative sociocultural focus.
- National and international news contingency.
- Predetermined Chilean movies, scenes or skits.
- Popular American movies, scenes or skits dubbed in Spanish.
- Documentary of Our Century (chapters 6 and 7).

Activities

- Lecture-based theoretic classes.
- Role play, dramatizations.
- Dissertations and/or individual presentations.
- Feildwork: Observation and investigation.
- Conversational debate.

Evaluation: This courses rests on the holistic evaluation where successive formative evaluations are integrated (in and outside of class work), and cumulative evaluations equal a final grade. The professor should turn in a calendar of evaluations and the instruments that will be utilized when distinctive abilities are evaluated.

Assessment
a. Percent Attendance 80%
i. Midterm exam 30%
ii. Quizzes 10%
iii. Participation 10%
iv. Individual presentation 10%
v. Essays 10%
vi. Final exam 30%