SPAN301

Welcome to SPAN 301, El arte de conversar en espafiol (The Art of Conversation in Spanish), a course designed to help you to develop advanced proficiency in Spanish in conversation and writing as well as more aware and skilled at negotiating the diverse cultural landscapes of contemporary society. This
course emphasizes writing as a process, which means that good writing involves several steps including brainstorming, planning, research, free-writing, editing and revision. You will have the opportunity to revise major papers. For help outside the classroom, please see me during my olfice hours and/or work with one ofthe Spanish tutors in the I-IGS lab in B127 between the hours of 8:00am and 5:00pm Monday — Friday. Reading and writing are excellent ways to greatly improve your literacy, fluency, vocabulary and accuracy in Spanish no matter your current proficiency. Some of the topics we will discuss are identity, personality, the imagination, film and other media, power and politics, love, and lifestyles.
While grammar will not be a major focus in this course, we will review some advanced structures when you have questions. Mastery of any language requires continuous practice and attention to linguistic detail. Of course, an enormous pan of this mastery is cultural competence that is required to effectively negotiate our diverse global world. In order to be able to engage with others authentically, we must understand the dynamics of power and privilege and identify and move beyond ethnocentric views we receive from our culture.