Canteli Dominicis, Reynolds. Repase y escriba: Curso avanzado de gramática y composición.

Repase y escriba: Curso avanzado de gramática y composición (workbook)

A good bilingual dictionary and a good Spanish/Spanish dictionary.

Course Description:

This course is designed for the post-intermediate student who has already mastered the following elementary and intermediate grammatical concepts: preterit/imperfect, ser/estar, verbs like gustar, commands and the perfect tenses. The course will consist of an intensive study of advanced Spanish grammar and will focus on writing and speaking. The course is highly recommended for students planning to study abroad or to take upper division classes.

1. The student will continue perfecting his/her usage of basic Spanish grammar in writing and speech.
2. The student will learn more sophisticated grammatical structures and apply these new forms in his/her writing and speech.
3. The student will increase his/her ability of producing spontaneous speech.
4. The student will prepare himself/herself for more advanced study both abroad or in upper division Spanish courses.

Attendance and Participation:

You must come to class prepared and ready to go. You will be called on and will have to respond in Spanish multiple times every day. During the semester you may miss up to three times. After your third absence three percentage points will be deducted from your final grade for each additional absence. This means you can't just write the papers and take the exams if you want a good grade. There are no excused absences. This includes illness, sports outings, family emergencies, early departure for vacations, etc.

No work will be accepted late. No make-ups permitted.

If any written work is deemed of unacceptable quality or the oral skills of the student are not adequate for a post-intermediate class the student will be asked to drop or withdraw. If you are concerned about this please talk to the professor immediately. Written work returned as unacceptable receives a grade of 0%.

Based primarily on the content to be covered in the textbook.

These will be short typed writing assignments. They should be double spaced with reasonable margins and font size. Ask if you are unclear what reasonable is. If you receive less than a 90% on your essay you may opt to do a rewrite. A rewrite will allow the student to recover a maximum of half of the lost points up to 90%.

70% can recover a maximum of 10 points

55% can recover a maximum of 17.5 points

Compositions will be short in-class writing assignments. They will be announced ahead of time. Students may do rewrites by typing and correcting a second draft.

You will give two short, spontaneous, impromptu presentations at different times during the course of the semester.

The impromptu exercise is an ideal tool to approximate the everyday flow of conversation in a foreign language. In this way, you will be asked to think fast about a topic, respond with minimal preparation, and gain confidence in your ability to navigate a field of topics in a foreign setting. This will work in the following way. You will be given a topic. You will step outside the classroom to prepare your thoughts for 3 minutes. You will return and speak about the topic for 4-5 minutes. Possible topics could be: (un)true stereotypes about Americans, the most interesting person you have ever met or a funny experience from your past.

You will be graded on grammatical accuracy and overall expression.

This is not definitive and may change according to the discretion of the professor.