Course Goals
The goal of the first-year Spanish program at UCD is to develop basic proficiency in Spanish. Students are expected to learn to use Spanish for communication in real, meaningful situations related to their experiences as university students. They will also develop written and oral comprehension skills through reading activities and watching real Spanish-speaking series and tv programs. It is also intended that students develop an understanding of basic grammatical concepts and an appreciation of the different cultures of the Spanish speaking world.
To attain these goals, the first-year courses focus on using Spanish as much as possible for classroom interaction.
Course Content
Spanish 001, 002, and 003 are a first-year Spanish program for students that have not studied Spanish previously. The Spanish Department is using the on-line textbook Contraseña: Your Password to Foundational Spanish, Lord and Rossomondo.
Spanish 1: Unidades 1-5
Functions include: greetings, descriptions of self and others, daily activities, and preferences. Major grammatical contents presented include: the present indicative in its regular form, as well as, grammatical and gender agreement.
Spanish 2: Unidades 6-10
Functions include: Communicating about professions, class activities, neighborhood and housing, past experiences, food preferences and family relationships. Major structures presented include irregular and stem-changing verbs in the present indicative and possessive adjectives.
Spanish 3: Unidades 11-15
Functions include: Communicating about childhood experiences, travel plans, clothing, giving instructions to elders or peers, talking about the future. Major structures presented include the imperfect and preterit tense.
Attendance
Spanish 001, 002 and 003 classes meet five days per week. As students are expected to repeatedly interact in Spanish with both classmates and their instructor attendance is mandatory. More than three unexcused absences will affect a student's grade. Each additional absence after the first three, will lower the Daily Class Work grade. A student missing class six or more times will automatically fail the course.