SPAN 101: Elementary Spanish

INTRODUCTION

Why should you be interested in studying Spanish? Spanish is the fastest­growing language in the world andranks third behind Chinese and English as the most widely spoken language. A second language is a valuableasset! Not only does it permit you to explore other countries and interact with new people, but most businessestoday see a second language as an advantage. It improves your opportunities for employment—in today’sinternational markets, a second language is becoming a necessity.

COURSE GOALS

SPAN 101 is the first half of the Elementary Spanish 101 and 102 introduction to the Spanish language. In thiscourse, you will learn the Spanish alphabet, grammar constructions, and vocabulary to help provide a foundationfor further Spanish language studies. The focus of the course is basic communication skills. We will be using thepresent tense, simple future tense, and simple past tense throughout this course. We will also concentrate onbuilding vocabulary skills.

Because you are not in a traditional classroom environment where you can practice your oral skills, it is vital thatyou practice with the online audio program (included in the online textbook package) to develop listening andspeaking skills. If you can, seek out a native speaker and practice some of the things we will learn in this course.Remember, accents and vocabulary will vary among Spanish­speaking countries, much as English varies amongthe United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, Belize, and Australia. What you will hear on the ¡Arriba! textbookaudio program is primarily a Mexican or Caribbean Latin­American accent.

This course also provides you with information on Hispanic culture, emphasizing the diversity among Spanish­speaking countries. Most text chapters have sections that introduce Hispanic countries or regions along withcultural comparisons.

TEXTS AND MATERIALS

Please refer to the course description for an up­to­date list of materials.

ASSIGNMENTS

For each chapter we cover, you should complete all of the available exercises, even those you are not requiredto submit for grading. You should do all of the exercises for each chapter in the Student Activities Manual on theMySpanishLab site. They offer you a chance to practice new vocabulary or grammar points. You can check youranswers and gauge your progress since many of the exercises are automatically scored.

The listening exercises in the “Mandatory Practice” sections of each lesson are very important as they willprovide you with critical oral practice. Spanish is a phonetic language, which means that once you have learnedthe sounds each letter represents, you will always know how to pronounce a word. Since the final exam will havea listening section in which you will have to listen to someone speaking in Spanish and respond to questionsabout what you hear, it is to your advantage to practice with the audio program often.

In addition to the assignments from the textbook and Student Activities Manual, you will complete twopronunciation assignments, two compositions, and two outside cultural assignments (a movie review and a finalproject).

Pronunciation Exercises

You will be required to record your reading of two short passages in Spanish. These pronunciation assignmentsare based on short passages from the audio program that correspond to the ¡Así es la vida! sections of the¡Arriba! text. The recordings allow you to listen to native speakers and practice along with them before recordingyour own readings. You will record on the MySpanishLab site. I will provide instructions when the time comes.

Compositions

The compositions will be short paragraphs written in Spanish (roughly 200 words) about personal topics in whichyou will use vocabulary and grammar you will have learned up to that point. For the first composition, you will bepermitted to use dictionaries; however, the second composition should be written without any aids other thanyour text. With the first composition, remember to be careful when using your dictionary—always double­checkthe meaning!

Movie Review and Final Project

The two cultural assignments are designed to help you learn about Latino culture. In a traditional classroom, Iwould invite native speakers to talk about their countries or I would show films and videotapes. In this course,your independent projects will allow you to explore different cultures and discover contributions made by Latinoindividuals on your own.

Movie review. The first assignment is a movie review. You will watch a Spanish­language (or mixed Spanish andEnglish) movie and write a review based on it. See the Movie Review section for more information on thisproject, including a movie list and guide (click the link in the navigation bar at left). This paper should be typed,double­spaced, written in English, and two pages in length.

Final project. The second assignment, your final project, involves a little more work. I have provided a list ofsuggested activities for this project on the Final Project page (click the link in the navigation bar at left). Yourproject should be double­spaced, in English, and at least three pages long. If you have an idea for a final projectbeyond those in the Activities List, please submit your idea with your Lesson 4 assignment (or before) so I willhave time to consider it.

You can turn in your movie review and final project assignments at any time during this course but they must beturned in before you take the final exam. I suggest that you look at the assignments now and plan when you willcomplete them. If completing either one of these projects presents a hardship, please let me know when yousubmit the Lesson 1 assignment and we will come up with other projects that will work for you.

FINAL EXAM

The final exam counts for 25 percent of your final grade. It will cover all the material in the first six chapters of the text. This is not as intimidating as it sounds—the material is progressive and builds upon the earlier material. Once you have a good grasp of the material in Chapter 1, you can apply it in Chapter 2, and so on.

The final exam is closed­book and supervised. No reference materials may be used. When you are ready, schedule a supervised final exam.

Since effective communication is our goal, the final exam allows for creativity. You will be asked to describe pictures and write letters or paragraphs on certain topics or use certain expressions learned in this course. The required vocabulary will come from the text, but you may certainly use Spanish vocabulary you have learned on your own.

Oral section: Total 50 points

30–35 points: Listen to a description and draw the scene described. Topics include the presentprogressive, location, and general vocabulary.15–20 points: Read a section and write answers to oral questions or hear a reading and write answers towritten questions based on the reading. Topics include food and cooking vocabulary.

Written section: Total 150 points

comparatives and superlatives (15–25 points)saber versus conocer and ser versus estar (20–30 points)irregular verbs (20–30 points)direct and indirect objects pronouns (15–20 points)descriptive composition (20 points)reading comprehension (20–30 points)structured composition (30 points). Topics include gustar and similar verbs, adjectives, and generalvocabulary.

GRADING

The written and oral assignments count for 75 percent of your final grade, and your final exam counts for 25percent. There are eight submissions and a supervised final exam.

Lesson 1 Assignments 5 points

Lesson 2 Assignments 5 points

Lesson 3 Assignments 5 points

Composition 1 (assigned in Lesson 3) 10 points

Lesson 4 Assignments 5 points

Pronunciation exercise (assigned in Lesson4)

5 points

Lesson 5 Assignments 5 points

Lesson 6 Assignments 5 points

Pronunciation exercise (assigned in Lesson6)

5 points

Composition 2 (assigned in Lesson 6) 10 points

Movie Review 5 points

Final Project 10 points

Final Exam 25 points

HOW TO BEGIN

The course schedule is up to you. You can complete the course in as few as twelve weeks or take as long asnine months. The important thing is to get a good start, then maintain your momentum.

Send me a Personal Information Sheet

Since this course is not held in a classroom, I will probably never meet you in person. Still, I would like to knowsomething about you so that I can associate each e­mail message from you with something more than a screenname. Therefore, your first task is to send me a Personal Information Sheet. This also gives us a chance tomake sure our communication lines are working, and that we can send and receive attachments.

Start work on Lesson 1

When you have finished reading this syllabus, click the link for Lesson 1 in the navigation bar at left and followthe instructions there.

ACADEMIC POLICIES

By enrolling as a student in this course, you agree to abide by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillpolicies related to the acceptable use of online resources. Please consult the Acceptable Use Policy on topicssuch as copyright, net­etiquette, and privacy protection.

As part of this course, you may be asked to participate in online discussions or other online activities that mayinclude personal information about you or other students in the course. Please be respectful of the rights andprotection of other participants under the UNC­Chapel Hill Information Security Policies when participating inonline classes.

When using online resources offered by organizations not affiliated with UNC­Chapel Hill, such as Google orYouTube, please note that the Terms and Conditions of these companies and not the University’s Terms andConditions apply. These third parties may offer different degrees of privacy protection and access rights to onlinecontent. You should be well aware of this when posting content to sites not managed by UNC­Chapel Hill.

When links to sites outside of the unc.edu domain are inserted in class discussions, please be mindful thatclicking on sites not affiliated with UNC­Chapel Hill may pose a risk for your computer due to the possiblepresence of malware on such sites.

Honor Code

As a Carolina Courses Online student, you are responsible for obeying and supporting an honor system thatprohibits lying, cheating, or stealing in relation to the academic practices of the University of North Carolina atChapel Hill. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Honor System also requires you to refrain fromconduct that significantly impairs the welfare or the educational opportunities of others in the Universitycommunity. You are expected to do your own work in all aspects of your course.

Academic dishonesty in any form is unacceptable, because any breach in academic integrity, however small,strikes destructively at the University’s life and work. Outside help of any kind on any assignment that is tobe turned in for a grade is considered academic dishonesty. With the exception of consultation with yourinstructor, no help may be received on any homework assignment or composition. Doing so is a violationof the honor code.

“Help” includes any aid received from personal tutors, friends, native speakers, or anyone other than yourinstructor on any assignment.

Your textbook and MySpanishLab may be consulted for assignments, compositions, and other course workunless you are specifically instructed otherwise. You are prohibited from using Internet translator sites.Furthermore, do not “copy and paste” from the textbook or MySpanishLab.

Quizzes and exams must be completed entirely on your own with no help of any kind from classmates,dictionaries, textbooks, or notes.

Group study is an activity that is both accepted and recommended. In preparation for any exam or quiz, you maywork with your classmate to help one another prepare.

Please view this brief Plagiarism Tutorial created by the librarians of UNC­Chapel Hill, Duke University, NC StateUniversity, and NC Central University.

Office of Accessibility/Special Accommodations

© The University of North Carolina Send comments and questions to fridaycenter@unc.edu.

If you are a student with a documented disability, you can receive services through Accessibility Resources &Service. You must self­identify through Accessibility Resources to receive services or accommodation from eitherof these offices. Accessibility Resources works closely with programs, offices, and departments throughout theUniversity to help create an accessible environment.

The office is located in Suite 2126 of the Student Academic Services Building (SASB), 450 Ridge Road, ChapelHill, NC, and is open from 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday. You can contact them by phone at 919­962­8300 or 711 (NC­RELAY) or by email at .

A FINAL NOTE

Although the text includes vosotros (the plural form of tú in Spain) as the informal second person plural (“youguys” or “y’all”), you will not be required to know it for the final exam. Keep in mind that if you plan to continuebeyond Spanish 101 and 102, you will be expected to recognize and understand this conjugation. In Spanish 203and 204 you will read selections from Spanish literature where vosotros is used. However, Latin America andSouth America use ustedes to represent the second person plural—whether formal or informal—and so will I.

I hope you enjoy SPAN 101 and plan to continue your studies in Spanish. Remember, it’s not just a class but anadventure in communication. ¡Buena suerte!