Note: A placement exam will be required when you arrive on site.

Advanced

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of four semesters (or six quarters) of college-level Spanish. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

Advanced Spanish

DESCRIPTION AND AIMS
The main goal of the course is to provide students with the appropriate atmosphere for them to develop their communicative competence from a low-advanced level towards a solid advanced one. This will be achieved through practice involving the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The course will focus on specific grammar aspects that will be approached from a communicative perspective. This perspective will assume and value active participation of the students in the class at all times.

SYLLABUS

Grammar contents:
- Ser/Estar: General uses, changes of meaning.
- Word construction. Verb periphrases.
- Use of past tenses. Time conjunctions.
- Personal pronouns.
- Time relations between actions.
- Uses of subjunctive tenses in relative, time and goal clauses.
- Use of tenses to express hypothesis. Conjunctions.
- Uses of subjunctive tenses in noun clauses.
- Conjunctions to express cause and opposition.
- Uses of the passive voice.
- Conditional and concession clauses.

Functional contents:
- Physical and psychical descriptions.
- Talking about the past.
- Narrating stories.
- Defining and giving instructions.
- Showing agreement and disagreement.
- Expressing hypothesis and probability.
- Repeting, telling and summarizing.
- Giving advice.
- Expressing likes, wishes and feelings.
- Expresing conditions and employing solid arguments.

METHODOLOGY
All grammar and functional contents will be integrated into activities within the framework of units with different topics. Both theoretical explanations and practical work will be combined in the class.

Assignments will include daily homework. There will be a final exam and several midterm tests.

Classes will be implemented with weekly visits to the multimedia laboratory, where students will have the chance to improve their pronunciation by means of the state-of-the-art software available to them.

ASSESSMENT
The final grade will be calculated according to the following grade breakdown:

Participation & attendance: 20%
Homework: 20%
Tests: 30 %
Final exam: 30%

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Textbook:
Abanico, Barcelona: Difusión, 1995.

Other sources of material to be used in class: Gente 3, Barcelona: Difusión, 2005.

Planeta 3, Madrid: Edelsa, 2002.
Prisma. Avanza, Madrid: Edinumen, 2004
Sueña 3, Madrid: Anaya, 2001.

Instructor's own material.

 Note:
- The grading system, as well as the assessment standards, will be the same as those used in the U.S.A.