Spanish 1-2 (Period 4)

First year Spanish is designed to introduce students to the language and culture of the Spanish speaking world. It adheres to the Standards for Foreign Language Learning as established by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language and the Washington State World Languages Learning Standards.  Emphasis is on vocabulary and grammatical structures in all the basic language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and culture. Developing oral pronunciation, as well as listening skills, is a focus of first year language as these functions are not only crucial to language development, but are often seen as the most useful skills of learning a second language. The first year student will be exposed to the Spanish speaking world and the many different cultures that it encompasses. Students will be asked to take a global view of these cultures and study their peoples in much the same way they would in a social studies classroom. Students will be expected to demonstrate basic vocabulary and grammatical structures, and to use the target language on a consistent basis. Students who successfully complete the course should be able to:

• Understand simple conversations and questions related to topics that have been studied.
• Recognize differences in the present tense, including irregular and stem changing verbs, and respond to other basic grammatical structures.
• Read with comprehension what can be understood aurally. Read prepared or edited stories, and understand a vocabulary of between 700 and 1,000 words in context.
• Read with general comprehension material that introduces a limited number of new vocabulary items that have not been previously practiced orally.
• Respond to questions, participate in dialogues and conversations, and initiate comments and questions on topics that have been studied.
• Pronounce with reasonable accuracy most of the sounds of Spanish.
• Write short paragraphs.