PRIDE UNIVERSITY
INTRO TO SPANISH II
WINTER 2012 QUARTER
Days and time: Tuesdays, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Instructor: José R. Carrasquel
e-mail @: profjrcarr@yahoo.com
Instructor’s Bio: José R. Carrasquel was born and grew up in Caracas, Venezuela and then moved to the United States to attend college at the age of 18. He is fully bilingual in Spanish and English and holds both an M.A. in Romance Languages and a Ph.D. in Romance Linguistics. He has been teaching Spanish Language courses at the college level throughout the United States for over twenty years now and has also presented scholarly talks on the History of the Spanish Language in national and international conferences. Currently, he teaches ENGL 101 – English Composition for Walden University, and just as importantly he will be teaching Spanish at Pride University as of the Fall 2011 quarter. Last but not least, he is a great Salsa dancer!
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This introductory course to the Spanish language is the second part of a two-quarter sequence based on a speaking proficiency approach. This approach focuses on the development of listening and speaking comprehension skills through constant exposure to common vocabulary and basic grammar in the form of spoken conversation. Furthermore, this approach fosters communicative interaction for common situations and purposes as described in the ‘Course Objectives’ below. Students do not need to buy a textbook as the instructor will provide the materials necessary for each lesson. Students are encouraged both to buy a Spanish-English dictionary and to take advantage of all the free tutorials in the Learning Spanish website, http://www.studyspanish.com/ .
COURSE PRE-REQUISITE
Given that this course is the second part of a two-quarter sequence, the pre-requisite to do well in this course is having acquired some prior knowledge of and/or exposure to the Spanish language (and/or any other Romance language) in at least one of the ways listed below.
Common ways in which one may have acquired prior knowledge of/exposure to the Spanish language (and/or any other Romance language):
1) You took Intro to Spanish I at Pride University and/or at least one Spanish Language course in the past, be it at the secondary or higher education level.
2) You are/were affiliated to a Spanish-speaking community through co-workers and/or relatives and thus have been exposed to and/or have gained some knowledge of the Spanish language without explicit instruction on it.
3) You are a native speaker of another Romance language such as French, Italian, and Portuguese.
4) Your native language is not a Romance language, but you have at least basic proficiency in speaking another Romance language such as French, Italian, and Portuguese as a second language.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
By the end of the course students should be able to:
- talk about the weather in various cities in order to plan trips,
- describe rooms and furniture in a house or hotel,
- make room reservations at a hotel,
- describe daily routine activities,
- talk about body aches and pains,
- tell others how to do or cook something,
- talk about past events and trips, and
- be able to prepare and present basic skits on the situations practiced in both Intro to Spanish I and Intro to Spanish II.
TENTATIVE COURSE CALENDAR
WEEK 1 Introduction to the course / Review of Intro to Spanish I Topics
WEEK 2 Talking about the weather and seasons of the year /The verbs ‘ser’ and ‘estar’
WEEK 3 Talking about houses, rooms, and furniture /
Making a room reservation at a hotel / Review of numbers 0 – 1,000,000
WEEK 4 Talking about our daily routines / Reflexive verbs
WEEK 5 Talking about ailments / Giving advice
WEEK 6 Students’ skits
WEEK 7 Telling others how to do or how to cook something / Commands
WEEK 8 Talking about recent trips / Preterite Tense of the verbs ‘ir, ser’ and regular verbs in the preterite
WEEK 9 Talking about past events / Irregular verbs in the preterite tense
WEEK 10 Review and fiesta