Department of Spanish & Portuguese

Dr. Cristina Sanz secured funding from Georgetown College and from the School of Foreign Service to cover summer stipends for Bahiya Maouleainin and Grant Armstrong, graduate students and coordinators of Advanced SFS and Intensive Advanced courses respectively. Armstrong, Maouleainin, and Sanz worked closely through the spring and summer to renew all five (Span 101,102,111,112,161) advanced courses to better meet the expectations set by the 2008 Modern Language Association Report, with special attention to development of cultural awareness and critical thinking, in consonance with Georgetown’s tradition of liberal education. Changes were motivated by the results of a recently published survey (Martinez & Sanz, 2007) on students’ goals and needs. While goals for language development remain the same, courses are now content-based; i.e. students learn to use the language (skill acquisition) through extensive and intensive readings, documentaries and films, debates, presentations, and short papers on the history, geography, and current events (encyclopedic knowledge) of Spanish-speaking regions on both sides of the Atlantic. Syllabi establish clear goals for the development of all four skills, acquisition of encyclopedic knowledge, and the development of critical thinking; these goals are reflected in all assessment materials.