Elementary Spanish I

DESCRIPTION AND GOALS
The course is aimed at students with some very basic knowledge of Spanish at the elementary level or no prior knowledge of Spanish. The main goal of the course is to provide students with the appropriate atmosphere for them to acquire and develop basic communicative skills. This will be achieved through practice involving the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The speaking skill will be emphasized by means of weekly sessions devoted to oral Spanish, where students will participate in activities such as roleplays, interviews, etc. All functional and grammar contents will be approached from a communicative perspective which will assume and value active participation of the students in the class at all times.

The main communicative goals of the course are the following:

• Exchanging information: name, phone number, e-mail address.
• Greeting others.
• Asking about preferences.
• Introducing oneself and others.
• Expressing cause and goal.
• Expressing conjecture: creo que…
•  Identifying : esto es…
• Asking for prices.
• Talking about shopping while traveling.
• Giving and asking for personal information: origin, age, place of residence, profession, and marital status.
• Talking about family relationships.
• Expressing lack of knowledge: no sé…
• Talking about daily routines and habits.
• Expressing and asking for the time.
• Talking about schedules.

Classes will be implemented with regular visits to the multimedia laboratory, where students will have the chance to improve their pronunciation by means of the state-of-the-art software available to them.
 

CONTENT:

• The alphabet: pronunciation.
• Numbers up to 10.
• Expressions to greet and say goodbye.
• Y, o, también, ni... ni...
• Verb llamarse.
• Subject pronouns.
• Present indicative of regular verbs.
• Verbs ser and tener.
• Para + noun/infinitive verb.
• Porque.
• Esto.
• Question words: qué, cuál, cómo
• Numbers up to 100.
• Names of countries
• Traveling, tourism and shopping vocabulary.
• Definite and indefinite articles: el, la, los, las, un, una...
• Demonstratives : este, esta, ese, esa...
• Gender and number of nouns.
• Uses of prepositions de and para.
• Family, personal relationships and profession vocabulary.
• Gender of nouns.
• Nationality nouns.
• Possessive determiners: mi, tu...
• Del/de la.
• Question words : de dónde, cuántos.
• Vocabulary on daily habits.
• Irregular forms of present indicative.
• Reflexive verbs.
• Impersonal se.
• Time and days of the week.
• Parts of the day.
• Verb tomar.
• La mayoría de, muchos.
• Dormir/dormirse.
• Question words: con quién, cuándo.
• Review for final exam.

METHODOLOGY
All grammar and functional contents will be integrated into communicative tasks structured around the main topics of each unit: talking about oneself and others, family relationships, expressing leisure preferences, etc.

Assignments will include brief compositions and daily homework. There will be a final exam and at least one midterm test.
 

GRADING CRITERIA
The final grade will be calculated according to the following breakdown: 

• Participation: 10%
• Homework: 20%
• Compositions: 15%
• Tests: 20 %
• Oral section: 15 %
• Final exam: 20%