Spanish – Language and Culture

Spanish-Language and Culture 1

Information on programmes

Course unit title: Spanish – Language and Culture 1

Course unit code: L-LIN/07 Lingua e Traduzione – lingua spagnola

Type of course unit: compulsory

Level of course unit: first cycle (1^st year)

Semester/trimester when the course unit is delivered: annual course

Number of ECTS credits allocated: 12

Name of lecturer(s): Prof. Héctor Rubén Ríos Santana

Learning outcomes of the course unit: The course aims at offering a service to the students, which goes beyond the lessons and ensures them the best support in their learning process, in order to enhance their autonomy.

It developes an integrate system which offers a balanced programme on linguistic skills and the possibility of doing a remarkable number of tests, supported by properly structured lessons.

The course fosters a positive and motivating climate in which students can test their personal and educational growth and development.

Our lessons are in the forefront about the newest trends on curricular renewals, as required by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR), as well as by the Cervantes Institute’s orientations.

Mode of delivery:

Face-to-face lectures and through the development of communicative digital competences (80 ore).

Prerequisites and co-requisites:

Spanish Language Level A2.

Course contents: At the end of the course, students will be able to express their opinions both in oral and in written form, while discussing them. They will be able to resume and paraphrase, as well as to influence on others’ opinions and reactions.

Their competence on written expression will allow them to write letters following the current rules.

They will achieve a general knowledge on the Hispanic sociocultural reality and will be able to participate in formal intercultural exchange programmes.

Functional contents:

• Telling and describing anedoctes about customs and traditions.
• Giving advice and instructions to interact with other cultures.
• Controlling communication; repeating, asking, doubting, resuming, etc.
• Attracting attention and animating the action. Persuading and convincing.
• Expressing desires. Reaction to a desire.
• Expressing possibility in present, past and future.
• Expressing doubt and concern. Being able to calm someone.
• Expressing opinions and judgements.
• Agreeing and disagreeing.
• Organizing a debate. Turn taking.
• Describing and defining. Identifying places, objects. Giving secondary information.
• Asking something in particular.
• Communicating something told by someone else.
• Relating two moments in the time line. Expressing the moment in which something happens. Fixing a moment in the future.
• Explaining the reason or the cause of an action and justifying it by refusing a previous cause.
• Expressing consequences and purposes.
• Expressing desires, doubts, thankfulness and other feelings.
• Expressing feelings on habits and concrete actions.
• Participating in formal cultural exchanges.
• Highlighting special speech aspects.
• Writing letters according to the current rules.
• Correcting what has been told.
• Paraphrasing. Resuming what someone else has told.
• Expressing partial agreement, prohibition, lack of interest, boredom, kindness.
• Judging or assessing.
• Encouraging and calming.

• Advising or asking for advise.

Grammar contents:

• Complete study of the Past tense.
• Expressions of curiosity and surprise.
• The Imperative mode in Latin America, fossilised Imperatives: venga, vamos, mira.
• Exercises of pronounciation to recognize the phonetic couples.
• Indirect speech in the Past.
• Irregular negative Imperative. Position of the pronouns.
• Subjunctive in the Present: regular and irregular morphology (Ojalá, espero/quiero/deseo + que).
• Futuro perfecto: morphology and uses.
• Futuro perfecto, imperfecto and condicional simple: a comparison.
• Probability markers: a lo mejor + indicative; quizá + subjunctive/indicative, etc.
• Tener que + infinitivo compuesto.
• Verbs and opinion expressions like me parece + adjective + que + subjunctive, es cierto/evidente + que + indicative, etc.
• Expressions to agree and disagree (estoy de acuerdo con, en lo de que, etc.)
• Ser and estar. A revision.
• Pretérito perfecto of subjunctive: morphology and uses.
• Verbs and expressions of feeling like me gusta que / no soporto que / me da rabia que / etc. + subjunctive.
• Sentences expressing relations or comparisons indicative/subjunctive according to the previous element.
• Verbs holding only the subjunctive mode.
• Verbs holding the subjunctive mode in their negative form.
• Time conjunctions: cuando, después de que, hasta que, etc. + indicative/subjunctive.
• Causal conjunctions: porque, como, debido a, etc.
• Final conjunctions: para que, a fin de que, etc.
• Consecutive conjunctions: por eso, por lo tanto, así que, etc.
• Intonation: basic exercises.
• Condicional compuesto.
• Imperfecto of the subjunctive mode: unlikely hipotesis in the present and in the future.
• Reasoning: speech organizers.

Lexical contents:

• Social relationships.
• Training and parts of the body. Verbs related to the body movements.
• Vocabulary and expressions about bulls.
• Studies.
• Television.
• Literature and cinema.
• Ecology.
• Radio and advertisement.
• Fashion.
• Steps of life.
• Obsessions and habits. Tastes and passions.
• Messages, telegrams, e-mails, formal and informal letters, notes.
• Sports.
• Flamenco.
• Useful words to write short ads.

• Theatre.

 

Thematic contents:

• Personal experiences and anecdotes.
• The cult of body. Beauty and health.
• A national celebration: the bulls.
• The educational system in Spain. The ideal lesson.
• Trash TV.
• Today Spanish cinema.
• Natural parks. Environmental protection and progress.
• The consumer society.
• The generation fight. How we treat our elderly people.
• The secret for happiness. Living life.
• The influence and the Internet and the related evolution of language.
• Young people in Spain. Related problems: spare time, job, relationships with parents, etc.
• Violence in sports.
• Singing, playing and dancing.
• Love guidence and marriage agencies.

• Theatre activity in Spain.

Recommended or required reading:

Planned learning activities and teaching methods:

Our lessons aim at developing the communicative skills of our students. Their participation is fostered in order to stimulate new aptitudes and skills useful to control autonomously their learning process.

The integration of different abilities emphasises their oral comprehension, as well as their oral and written expression, and considerations about their learning and communicative strategies.

In this framework, we include a positive conception of the error.

Lessons are planned according to the students’ needs, following their learning abilities and their emotional involvement. In other words, we believe in an educational path focused on fostering the active participation of students.

The programme includes activities and homework, taking advantage of the study materials. The communicative activities are based on the lack of information, the interaction and the cooperative construction of the message.

Lessons are taught in the framework of the communicative method and follow the recent research about learning Spanish as a second language of the approach called “enfoque por tareas”.

The activation of students’ communicative competence leads to a lesson plan which considers the linguistic outcomes related to the sociocultural adaptation, the improvement of communicative and learning strategies. The elements of coherence and cohesion will be highlighted.

Assessment methods and criteria:

Assessment will be considered from a wide perspective and as an integration of the study curriculum. It will be done through the collection and the analysis of any information provided during the lessons in order to evaluate in which manner our study planning is completed.

Basically, we consider two different types of assessment: on the one hand, we assess if the students reach the expected outcomes; on the other hand, we assess the function of the teacher.

As regards the assessment methodology, it will be either qualitative or quantitative. Continuous evaluation will contribute to final assessment.

Back to the study plan