Hi. My name is Kristen Turpin, and on behalf of all my colleagues who teach Hispanic Studies 30A, I’m here to tell you about our Intermediate Spanish I course. In this video, I’ll briefly introduce the course and answer the questions that students typically have.
Hispanic Studies 30A is an intermediate Spanish course that will develop your language skills in an intellectually engaging environment. By the end of the semester, you will achieve intermediate-low to intermediate-mid speaking proficiency, which means you will be able to survive in real-world situations that require you to speak only in Spanish: such as studying abroad, completing volunteer work, traveling, engaging with Waltham neighbors, etc.
Although this course broaches topics that you may have seen superficially in other Spanish courses, we’ve designed each unit to ensure that you can expand your abilities. Whether you are coming from Hispanic Studies 20 at Brandeis or from a high-school language course, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to take risks and push the boundaries of your Spanish speaking abilities.
In the first unit, we take a deep dive into our personalities. Who am I? What experiences and people have shaped my personality and my interests? You’ll learn to talk about yourself with nuance and in depth.
The second unit is all about traveling. We will talk about our travel preferences, identify local activities that have similar benefits to traveling, look at how tourism impacts local communities (positively or negatively), and give advice to other travelers.
In the final unit, you’ll engage with art and film to broach the topic of immigration. Why do people migrate? What challenges do they face? How are immigrants received in their new communities? You’ll learn to express opinions and cite evidence to support them as you learn about stories of migration from Venezuela and Spain.
In all of these units, you will demonstrate what you’ve learned in assessment tasks that ask you to use Spanish in real-world situations, such as interviewing for a volunteer position, writing emails, or organizing community events.
So, how do I know if this course is right for me?
Well, this course, Hispanic Studies 30, fulfills the language requirement of the Brandeis Core.
To be placed in this course, you’ll work with Professor Elena González Ros, Director of the Spanish Language Program, to make sure that this course is right for you.
If you took Hispanic Studies 20, 30 is the next course in the language sequence, and it will be a good fit for you.
If you took Spanish in high school or at another institution, we’ll use our placement test or perhaps an AP test score to estimate your level and then place you in the correct course. Many students who have never taken Spanish at Brandeis start in Intermediate Spanish I and have great success in the course.
In any instance, the Director of the Spanish Language Program, Elena González Ros, will be able to advise you best.
¡Nos vemos en clase!