Spanish Language Through Culture I

This intensive summer course gives students with no prior exposure to Spanish the vocabulary, grammatical background, and communicative skills that they need to jump into Spanish 2 at their schools.

This course replicates what is typically a yearlong course, so students should expect to dedicate 15-20 hours per week during the seven-week summer session. Please note, this course is not recommended for those wanting a light introductory course to get a taste of Spanish before deciding if they want to study it further, nor for those wanting to get a jumpstart for a Spanish 1 course during the academic year.

In this course, students master greetings and introductions, question formation, describing daily routines, expressing likes and dislikes, describing familiar people and places, and other fundamental communicative functions. Students learn to communicate using common regular and irregular verbs in the present tense and the immediate future. Students also develop a broad-based vocabulary related to common settings including school and the classroom, home and family life, and others.

The primary focus of the course is to develop novice interpersonal and presentational speaking and comprehension skills. Through interacting with classmates and instructors, students practice their budding language skills in a self-paced online environment. Video calls in pairs or small groups occur one or two times a week and are a required course component. They are comparable to the practical lab component of a science course because students speak Spanish with each other and the instructor while immediately observing and reacting to the results of their efforts to communicate.

Students in GOA courses will need reliable access to a computer with webcam/microphone connections, an email address (preferably school-based), a Web-conferencing app (GOA courses use Zoom), and a Word processing app (GOA courses use Google’s G Suite). When necessary, alternative arrangements may be made.

NCAA-approved course

UC-approved course

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