Novice

__**COURSE DESCRIPTION **__ In this course, our goal will be to acquire Spanish language. “Acquiring” a language is very different than “learning” a language. Acquiring is something that happens to you instead of something that you make happen. When you learned how to speak your first language, you acquired it naturally by listening to other people speak it around you for a long time; not by studying it. Therefore, almost all of our class time will be spent using Spanish--not using English to talk about Spanish--and the focus will be on listening and reading instead of speaking and writing. Those skills will come naturally as you take in more and more Spanish by listening and reading, but they will not be a major focus of the course. This Spanish course is a Comprehensible Input Spanish course, and we will use methods and strategies that are based on Dr. Stephen Krashen’s Input Hypothesis. In particular, we will use the TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) method of language instruction that was developed by Blaine Ray and based on the work of Dr. James Asher.

We will focus our class time on the acquisition of high frequency structures (the most frequently used words in a language); between three and six new target structures each week. (You will learn more than this, but you will only assessed on the target structures.) We will use these structures in class discussions, stories, and cultural explorations, and you will be expected to recognize them when you read or hear them and, in time, be able to produce them in speech and writing. Before the year ends, you will read several novels. Developed by Martina Bex class syllabus www.MartinaBex.com the Comprehensible Classroom