SPAN 110 (L1, First Semester)
Nothing is more exciting than facing a group of students eager to learn a new foreign language. In 2016-2018 I taught elementary Spanish I. The course is extremely well organized and there is a wealth of material from previous years. One method that I find useful for promoting discussion of extended texts is to provide a sequence of images that allow the students to recount major events in the short novel. I also created a reading assessment following the instructions of the course director.
SPAN 120 (L2, Second Semester)
When I was course director for L2, I worked with both language faculty and PTAIs to construct culturally rich material. Each unit was dedicated to a well-known person or iconic element and a particular country. When possible, I included a pertinent audio component, recorded at CLS by native speakers (members of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese) of the country in question. Originally, these units were used as exams, but were soon appropriated as pre-testing review material. The topics ranged from a humorous scene from a Mexican soap opera, a revered Argentinean cartoon character, a Quechua chronicler, and the example provided, the Uruguayan author Horacio Quiroga. I have used the audio, recorded by my former colleague, Alicia VanAltena, in class as a listening-comprehension activity, and have also transformed it into a video, Misiones, for cultural presentations.
SPAN 130 (L3, Third Semester)
To supplement a video in the textbook used in Span 130, I created this grammar review worksheet. These activities complement a reading, El etnógrafo, in the course packet.
SPAN 140 (L4, Fourth Semester)
SPAN 243 (L5, Advanced Spanish Grammar)
This is a challenging course that encourages students to reflect on lexical and linguistic nuances. In class, students work in pairs or small groups on activities such as the following, related to the reading Muerto y resucitado, which helps them understand and learn the different ways of expressing the word “time” in Spanish.