Spanish for Academic and Professional Purposes

DESCRIPTION AND GOALS
The course will focus on the improvement and accuracy of the writing skills of students at an advanced level of Spanish. The aim of the course is to enable those students to produce formal texts in personal, social, professional, and academic settings. They will analyze a range of text types, identify their main and ancillary ideas, and recognize general structural elements in order to be able to produce similar texts of their own. Formal elements such as spelling, punctuation, and quoting will also be addressed.

The main contents of the course will be :

• Personal and professional reports.
•  Meeting minutes.
• Questionnaires.
• Forms.
• Formal letters and e-mails.
• Contracts.
•  Agreements.
• Scientific and informative articles.

METHODOLOGY
The analysis of each of the different text types will be approached through a variety of text handling and writing activities ranging from structure awareness exercises to summarizing, reporting, etc.

Students will get to complete a portfolio including assignments of the text types to be covered. The writing of each text will be the final product of intermediate stages in the writing process that will require feedback from both peers and instructor.

By the end of the course, students will need to write an additional final paper based on one of the text types analyzed in class.

Tests on punctuation, spelling and accent marks will also be given throughout the course.

ASSESSMENT
The final grade will be calculated according to the following percentages:

• Participation: 10 %
• Homework: 20%
• Text writing (portfolio) :20%
• Tests: 15 %
• Final Exam: 35 %