Spanish+Course+Description

Course Description ·  An introduction to the Spanish language and the diverse cultures that use it. Emphasis will be placed using a combination of comprehensible-input approaches to acquire novice-mid proficiency in a core, high-frequency vocabulary. ·  Teaching with comprehensible input is a way of naming all those best practices or strategies in language teaching that are based on the research showing that plentiful exposure to easily understood language is of primary importance in acquiring (as opposed to merely learning or memorizing) a language. ·  Students who enter with significantly higher proficiency than others (for example, from use at home) will do independent literacy-building work much of the time with a goal of achieving more proficiency in reading and writing. They will be graded on completion of those tasks and alternate versions of quizzes and tests. Objectives: Novice-Mid Proficiency ·  Get students communicating at Novice-Mid proficiency based on the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and Can-Do Statements (the Utah standards are largely a reproduction of these Can-Do Statements). ·  In accordance with the Utah standards, my course will have students use their knowledge of Spanish “to engage in meaningful, intercultural communication, understand and interpret the spoken and written language, and present information, concepts and ideas in local and global communities” thereby gaining “an understanding of the perspectives of other cultures and compare the language and cultures learned with their own.” ·  The Salt Lake City School District’s World Languages Framework for Developing Proficiency will be addressed but with a comprehensible-input approach that builds a high-frequency vocabulary in the Framework’s thematic areas in a dispersed fashion (moving from more common to less common vocabulary) rather than as separate units: o Me and my world; school; family and friends; leisure; food; daily routines, home environment, domestic tasks; clothing, fashion, city life, beauty; holidays, vacation, travel. Course Materials Texts: ¡Avanzemos!