Advanced

Prior to enrolling in courses at this language level, students must have completed or tested out of a minimum of four semesters (or six quarters) of college-level Spanish at their home university in the U.S.

I. COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is directed toward students of Spanish as a foreign language, at a stage of improvement, who are looking to consolidate the knowledge of the language that they have already acquired. This course will work on grammatical structures appropriate to this level, both in terms of recognizing and applying them. Also, fundamental importance will be given to the incorporation of vocabulary. Oral and written production will be improved, keeping in mind the demand for fluency and correct usage appropriate to this level.

It is important to point out that the student will be immersed in a community that uses this language, and, therefore, will be obligated to use it in everyday situations. In this case, the course plans to take advantage of this access to knowledge about and experience with Argentine cultural rules, and to stimulate contact with the language through different settings and local means.

II. GENERAL PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES

1. The general purpose of this course is to put the student in contact with the contemporary Argentine cultural tradition and to stimulate grammatical and communicative competency with the language.
2. Objectives of the course
a. To broaden the range of communicative contexts in which the students participate, building up fluidity and correct usage incrementally
b. To contextualize discursive elements from the viewpoint of real communication
c. To emphasize the relationship between language and culture, so that the student may perceive that when learning a language, one is gaining access to a culture

III. METHODOLOGY

The class will work with authentic texts, exercises with direct application, oral activities, group debates, and sessions on topics related to the culture of Argentina. The exercises will treat preferentially lexical questions, syntactic structures, and grammatical problems of irregular difficulty, giving a good deal of space to punctuation, often forgotten or unknown by native and foreign speakers. Work material will be given out by the professor.

IV. CONTENTS

Unit 1:

Presentation of the phonetic, morphosyntactic, and lexical characteristics of the Spanish of the Río Plata region. Review of the Imperfect-Indefinite contrast.
Contrasting ser-estar.
Uses and functions of the article. Emphatic uses. Prepositions.
Review of the tenses of the indicative and subjunctive moods.

Unit 2:

Review of the indicative and subjunctive moods (continuation).
Conditional phrases. Other forms of expressing condition (de + infinitive, essential condition of the present subjunctive, etc.).
Phrases showing concession. Other forms of expressing relationships of concession: with type intensifiers, (con) lo que, aun/incluso + gerund, y eso que + indicative, etc.

Unit 3:

Uses of “se”: integration.
The passive voice. The passive with “se”.
Impersonal clauses.
The impersonal with “se”.
Review: direct and indirect style. Other forms of reproducing messages from other speakers.

Unit 4:

Relative phrases. Expanding uses. Review of the uses of the moods in relative phrases.
Uses of prepositions.
Contrasting para-por.
Verbal paraphrasing: integration. Constructions of informal language.
Normative: rules of accentuation.

V. EVALUATION

Evaluation of the students will be based on the following table:

(a) Daily work 25%
(b) Class participation 50%
(c) Final evaluation 25%

The first category (“daily work”) includes preparatory reading of the texts.

VI. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alcina Franch, J. y J. Blecua (1975): Gramática española, Barcelona: Ariel.
Austin, J. L. (1982) [1962]: Cómo hacer cosas con palabras, Barcelona - Buenos Aires: Paidós.
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Borrego, J., Asencio, J. G. y Prieto, E. (1985): El subjuntivo, Madrid: SGEL.
Bosque, I. (ed.) (1990): Indicativo y subjuntivo, Madrid: Taurus.
______ (1990): Las categorías gramaticales, Madrid: Síntesis.
Coseriu, E. (1987): Gramática, semántica, universales, Madrid: Gredos.
______ (1989): Teoría del lenguaje y lingüística general, Madrid: Gredos.
Dik, S. (1997): The theory of functional grammar, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
García Negroni, Ma. M. y M. Tordesillas Colado (2001): La enunciación en la lengua. De la deixis a la polifonía, Madrid: Gredos.
Gómez Torrego, L. (1988): Perífrasis verbales, Madrid: Arco.
_____ (1992): Valores gramaticales del "se", Madrid: Arco.
_____ (2002): Nuevo manual de español correcto, tomos I y II, Madrid: Arco.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985): An introduction to functional grammar, London: Edward Arnold.
Kovacci, O. (1986), Estudios de gramática española, Buenos Aires: Hachette.
_____ (1990-1992): El comentario gramatical, tomos I y II, Madrid: Arco.
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_____ (1999): “El adverbio”, I. Bosque y V. Demonte (dirs.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, Madrid: Espasa Calpe, cap. 11, vol. 1, pp. 705 - 786.
Lapesa, R. (1978): “Sobre dos tipos de subordinación causal”, Estudios ofrecidos a Emilio Alarcos Llorach III, pp. 173 - 205.
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Varela Ortega, S. (1994): Formación de palabras, Madrid: Taurus.