Guess which one is Ben Christensen. I am standing with my good friend, Pedro Casals, "novelista extraordinario" and business consultant in Spain. But, enough of Pedro (He's the one with the beard!).
COURSE SYLLABUS SPANISH 301 CHRISTENSEN
Texts: (Listed in bookstore under Christensen)
Las aventuras de Hector, books 1 and 2 (two books), Pedro Casals, Heinle &
Heinle Pub. (College adaptation by Christensen)
Guess which one is Ben Christensen. I am standing with my good
friend, Pedro Casals, "novelista extraordinario" and business consultant in
Spain. But, enough of Pedro (He's the one with the beard!).
Purpose of this course: This course is to provide students the
opportunity to continue their development primarily in reading with a secondary
focus on writing. Discussions about the reading selections will be carried out
in Spanish in small and large group formats. Five compositions will be assigned
during the course of the semester. In addition, the mid-term and final exams
will be in an essay (i.e., composition) format. It is expected that the readings,
the compostions, and the discussions, all in Spanish, will bolster students'
ability and confidence in communicating in Spanish. Native speakers of Spanish
should concentrate on refining their communicative abilities and attempt to
accomodate formal ways of communicating, beyond the more "everyday" informal
modes. There are two basic language functions that any person who desires to
communicate in a language must master: describing and explaining. To attain
the ability to describe and to explain objects and events, one must practice
these two language functions extensively. Group discussions will facilitate
that practice. Further, drawings on overhead transparencies will provide more
stimulus for describing and explaining events and scenes. That is the primary
purpose of this course. Some grammatical topics will also be included as a result
of grammatical issues which emerge from the reading selections and the compositions.
Attendance and Participation: Since discussions of the reading
selections will be done in small, cooperative learning groups, your participation
is absolutely vital to the smooth operation of this course. Therefore, two absences,
which represent one full week of class, are allowed with no penalty. Thereafter,
every absence will lower the student's final grade by a half grade (e.g., B+
to B). Topics based on the reading selections will be assigned to small groups
of students for their oral communicative development. Teams, "expert groups"
and themes will be the focus of this aspect of the course. In addition, there
will be other classroom activities, including transparencies for discussions.
The instructor will maintain an objective point system to document individual
participation in classroom discussions. At the end of the course, the most discussion
points, set by the person who participated the most, will fix a benchmark level
for an "A" in the category of "Participation." From there, other lower levels
of participation will set other grades (i.e., B, C, D, F). Thus, each student
should do his/her utmost to participate to the maximum possible. The instructor
will do his part in attempting to accomodate all students' attempts to participate.
Quizzes: There will be short quizzes given at the end of the
conversation groups based on detailed information in the assigned readings,
consisting of concepts, actions, people and vocabulary. (Some quizzes may not
be given, but such will not be announced beforehand. Students should come to
class prepared for a quiz for each conversation activity based on the novels.)
A student will be allowed to drop one quiz grade, either the lowest grade or
a quiz that was missed. There will be no make-up quizzes.
Compositions: There will be four compositions due according
to the class schedule shown below. The topic of each composition will be announced
at the beginning of each writing period. It is expected that the final version
of each composition will be typed and polished before submitting it to the instructor.
The evaluation of each composition will be based on form and content. It will
be to a student's advantage to proofread each composition carefully before its
submission. The instructor will circle all errors and return compositions to
the students. Each student will verify in writing the total number of errors
for each of five categories (e.g., (1) accents, (2) spelling/vocabulary, (3)
agreements, (4) verb tenses/grammar/syntax, (5) punctuation/ incomplete sentences),
resubmit the same composition with all errors corrected, next to each circled
error, and receive a one-half grade augmentation for that composition. As part
of the learning experience, it is absolutely necessary for each student to correct
errors and to resubmit the corrected composition (no retypes, please!!) for
a grade adjustment.
Exams: There are two written exams, one based on each of the
two texts plus other topics covered in class. The first exam will be based on
the first half of the semester; the second exam, at the end of the semester,
on the second half of the course. These two exams constitute the mid-term and
final exams.