SP 342 - Spanish Grammar Through Composition: Independent Abroad

This course is designed for students with an advanced Spanish level in order to improve their writing, reading, and oral expression, taking advantage of linguistic and cultural immersion.

In this course students will gain proficiency in the skillful use of the language and will be able to refine the necessary tools to engage native speakers in fluid conversation, and will also be able to maintain a complex argumentation. In addition, this course emphasizes a language-in-use perspective. Students will develop their language skills and intercultural competence by means of research projects (‘course-related trips), written assignments, debates, oral presentations, and critical reading of articles and a novel.

Research has demonstrated that study abroad can enhance every aspect of language ability. One of the most important general findings of this research is, however, that study abroad is most beneficial for the development of abilities related to social interaction. Students who go abroad can learn to do things with words, such as requesting, apologizing, or offering compliments, and they may also learn to interpret situations calling on such speech acts in ways that local people do…In short, and logically, study abroad has been shown to enhance the aspects of communicative competence that are most difficult to foster in classroom settings.