56:940:501 Exceptionalities
This course helps pre-service teachers understand the wide spectrum of learners that they may find in a classroom, and provides them with tools to understand and provide differentiated types of instruction to support students with special needs in the language classroom.
56:940:502 Professional responsibility
Based upon previous and current coursework. Students create a teaching portfolio reflecting on the NJ teaching standards and connects them to their own teaching artifacts. This work is presented and defended before a three-person committee.
56:940:513 Introduction to Spanish Sociolinguistics.
This course is intended to provide the student with a panoramic view of the field of Hispanic Sociolinguistics. Topics to be discussed in this course range from basic concepts such as language, dialect, bilingualism, etc. to more complex issues such as language variation and change, or languages in contact. Students in this course will gain a more accurate perspective on the complexity of the internal and external factors that shape the Spanish language, be able to use and understand basic terminology in the field of Hispanic Sociolinguistics, and develop the ability to do independent research in the field of Hispanic Sociolinguistics.
56:940:515 Acquisition of Spanish as a Second Language
This course is an introduction to the field of Spanish Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Spanish SLA examines the evolution of Foreign Language instruction in the last 50 years, focusing on topics such as: grammar instruction, feedback techniques, vocabulary learning, the role of repetition, communication and interaction, the role of the instructor, and the development of specific abilities and skills. This course looks at some of the current research projects and findings related to those issues, and how such research can help shape the pedagogical practice of foreign language teachers. Students in this course will gain a more accurate perspective on the complexity of the internal and external factors that shape the Spanish language, be able to use and understand basic terminology, and develop the ability to conduct independent research in the field of Spanish SLA.
56:940:517 Methods of Teaching Spanish
This course seeks to ask the fundamental questions in Spanish second language learning, teaching, and acquisition in order to provide an understanding of the major issues in theory and in practice faced by professionals in the field subsumed by Language(s), Literature(s) and Culture(s). The course will be carried out with an emphasis on the application of the body of knowledge on second and foreign language acquisition to the instruction and learning of second and foreign languages.
56:940:521 Spanish Grammar and Linguistics I.
This course is intended to provide the student with a panoramic view of the linguistic patterns present in the Spanish Language and their functions within the system. This course has two main objectives: 1) A contrastive study of the Spanish and English grammatical systems, and 2) Its practical applications to Spanish language teaching, learning, and research. Students in this course will gain a more accurate perspective on the complexity of the internal and external factors that shape the Spanish language, be able to use and understand basic terminology, and develop the ability to do independent research.
56:940:522 Spanish Grammar and Linguistics II.
This course is a continuation of Spanish Grammar and Linguistics I (56:940:521). While intending to deepen the students’ knowledge of the linguistic patterns present in the Spanish Language and their functions within the system, Spanish Grammar and Linguistics II has a bigger focus on the issues and practical applications of teaching, learning, and researching grammatical topics in the Spanish language classroom. Students in this course will develop a more accurate perspective on the complexity of the internal and external factors that shape the Spanish language, and will implement their metalinguistic knowledge to teaching and in independent research.
56:940:523 Spanish Literature Immersion
This course provides a new awareness of the importance of a literary component in any curriculum of the k12 experience by supplying the necessary tools and skills to teach such curriculum effectively and in the target language (Spanish). Teachers taking this class will gain a deeper understanding of the cognitive, social, linguistic, and cultural benefits that the subject of literature produces in his/her instruction and students. Furthermore, such understanding will deeply illuminate why literature constitutes an essential tool to form, channel, and expand our students’ sense of self and their relation to their surrounding world without undermining the privilege of their own individuality.
56:940:530 Capstone Seminar
Based upon previous and current coursework, a culmination teaching portfolio presented and defended before a three person committee.
56:940:531 Technology in the Spanish World
This course focuses on the most prominent theoretical frameworks, research, technologies, and concepts of Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL), Second Language Learning theories and its research, and Foreign Language pedagogy with a focus on Spanish. TELL is an area that is critical for the professional development of prospective foreign and second language educators, and would also be of interest to students of applied linguistics and education. Students in this course will develop a basic knowledge of the key concepts, problems, and hopes associated with TELL and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). This course will also explore the tools, classroom applications, and digital pedagogy of TELL applied to the Spanish language classroom.
56:940:535 Sociocultural Theory in the Spanish World.
This course explores the principles of Sociocultural theory (SCT) in its connections with the field of Spanish Language Learning and Teaching. Departing from a review of the main tenets of the paradigm (the genetic method, semiotic mediation, internalization, activity as explanatory principle, minimal unit of analysis, conceptual development, Zone of Proximal Development), the course will explore the theoretical, research, pedagogical implications of SCT for humanities and education. Throughout the semester students will engage in a range of theoretical, pedagogical, and reflective activities that will enable them to not only understand the material at hand, but also apply it to their Spanish language teaching and assessment practices.
56:940:533 Assessment and Evaluation in the Spanish Classroom.
This course explores the assessment of Foreign/ Second Languages both at a theoretical and at a practical level with a focus on the Spanish classroom. It conceptualizes the dichotomy teaching-assessment of the Spanish language as a fundamental pedagogical enterprise. Specifically, this course explores some of the latest issues that have come of key importance over the last few years among the foreign/second language educators in the field of assessment and evaluation. Throughout the semester students will engage in a range of theoretical, pedagogical, and reflective activities that will enable them to not only understand the material at hand, but also apply it to their Spanish language teaching and assessment practices.
56:940:536 Introduction to Spanish Applied Linguistics.
This course intends to provide students with a panoramic view of the field of Hispanic Applied Linguistics. Students in this course will be introduced to general notions of communication and language, Spanish linguistics (language and communication, Spanish phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics), Language in context (sociolinguistics, languages in contact and Spanish dialectology), evaluation and assessment (Dynamic Assessment, Standardized Testing, ACTFL’s OPI), and Technology in the Spanish Classroom. Upon completion of this course students will have developed a basic knowledge of the key concepts, problems, and hopes associated with the field of Hispanic Applied Linguistics, as well as a general understanding of its practical applications in the Spanish classroom.
56:940:540 Bilingualism in the United States.
In this course, students will gain an understanding of the main tenets of bilingual language acquisition (age of onset, the role of input, types of bilingualism, language planning), with a particular emphasis on the integration of multilingualism and multiculturality in the foreign language classroom. Students will also be encouraged to reflect about current controversies regarding bilingualism in the US educational system and in their everyday lives.
56:940:541 The Scientific Method: Doing Research in Spanish Literature and Linguistics
This course provides students with the tools needed to develop an effective research framework in Spanish (literature and linguistics), walking them through the first stages of designing a project, choosing and reporting the most appropriate sources, as well as developing research questions and hypothesis. Students will be expected to use the information provided to produce their own research paper.
56:940:542 Spanish Literature Survey
This course equips teachers with the pedagogical resources, assessment techniques, and mastery of content necessary to produce extraordinary results among his/her students. The course covers the entire curriculum stipulated by the College Board, organizing it thematically according to the topics proposed by this body. By providing solid strategies on how to develop a full range of skills—with emphasis on critical reading and analytical writing—this class demonstrates the academic opportunities that an AP Literature Course provides to advanced Spanish students.
56:940: 544: Mass Media Culture in the Spanish Speaking World
This course explores how the idea of “truth” has been molded and manipulated by multiple traditions, discourses, and platforms throughout history. It traces how some of the most recurring cultural myths about Spain and Latin America have recently morphed into the powerful post-factual constructs exposed and authorized by social media. By reading a variety of foundational sources of political and literary theory, this course shows teachers how to build with their students an intellectual compass that would allow them to explore the complex questions framing and affecting their world today.
56:940:559 Landscape Representation in Latin American Culture
This course will survey representations of the Latin American landscape in a wide range of literary texts. We will focus on modes of geographic perception and literary representation, exploring the intersections of nature and culture in a variety of landscapes and literary contexts. We’ll examine how landscapes are represented in Latin American fiction, poetry, and non-fiction prose, with particular attention to the relationship between landscape and identity.
56:940:560 Woman Writers of the Hispanic World
This course introduces students to the work of major Spanish and Latin American women writers, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. Some of the authors to be studied include Rosario Ferré (Puerto Rico), Alfonsina Storni (Argentina), Lucía Etxebarría (Spain) and María Luisa Bombal (Chile). In reading women writers from different backgrounds, students will have an opportunity to explore and understand the differences and commonalities among them. Among the issues that will be addressed in class are: women writers and the literary canon; the representation of female identity and female sexuality; women and the political reality.
56:940:561 Reading the Urban Experience in Spanish American Culture
This course will analyze the city as a space of representation in Spanish and Spanish American literary texts from early modernization to the 1930s. Emphasis will be placed on the ways the city becomes the site for opportunities, new hopes, and socio-political awareness, but also for anxiety, misery, and despair. The course intends to respond to the questions that arise upon looking into spaces —the urban exterior and the bourgeois interior— occupied, and represented by national and generic subjectivities.
56:940:562 Spanish American Short Story
The course will approach the developments of the modern short story in Latin America during the 20th century. We will proceed chronologically, exploring the different manifestations of the genre according to the literary, social and aesthetic movements and trends. The course studies short stories according to their style and form (modernismo, avant-garde, regionalist, surrealist, marvelous real), as well as their content (costumbrista, fantastic, detective, psychological). Lectures will provide the cultural, historical and social context. Students will be introduced to literary concepts and analytical methods during lectures as well.
56:940:567 Centennial Celebrations of Latin American Independence
During the celebrations of the Centenario, the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Independence movement in Latin America, many authors and intellectuals focused their work on the formulation of a Pan-Hispanic cultural order. In the context of the desire to assert a spiritual essence shared by all Latin American nations, the writings of the Centenario proposed an optimistic, cosmopolitan, and Euro-centric vision that also stressed an idealistic fusion of races and the recuperation of a common past. This course will offer a broad introduction to the wide rage of Latin American texts written during this period, focusing on issues of self, nation, class, race, and gender.
56:940:568 Modernismo and Modernity
This course follows the major modernist writers of Latin America, starting with early writers and accompanying European influences, leading up to the transition into contemporary and post-contemporary forms. Both poetry and prose are studied, but special emphasis is given to early modern poets and poetry of the early twentieth-century. Given the historical context of Latin America at the turn of the century, the course also examines the link between the artistic and political movements of the period, as well as authors’ roles as both poets and as heads of political movements within their respective countries and regions of the Americas.
56:940:569 Representing Identities in Latin American Art and Culture
The course explores the representation of identity through written narrative of Latin America of the 19th and 20th centuries. For the purposes of this course, we concentrate on four identity categories: race, class, gender and nation, and we operate under the foundational assumption that identities are unstable and fluid, rather than fixed and essential. The course will focus in different literary movements that have underlined an autonomous nationalism such as indigenismo (Perú), criollismo (Argentina), costumbrismo (México), and negrismo (Cuba).
56: 940: 570 Sex and Gender in Spanish American Literature
Spanish American Modernismo (1890-1920) offers a wide range of representations previously considered “taboo” in Spanish culture; we will look closely at transgressed attitudes toward sex and gender in the period via literary and visual works that feature an array of “dangerous” people: the femme fatale, effeminate men, prostitutes, and hysterics. While our focus will be on representations of gender and sexuality, we will also look at the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with race, class, nationality, and other social factors. In keeping with the goals of the graduate program in Spanish, we will also focus on instruction methods, strategies and approaches to teach gender and sexuality.
56: 940: 571 Networking the Novel: The Latin American Boom in the Digital Era
This course focus on the relationships between storytelling and mass media, paying particular attention to the ways in which media influence the artistic and literary production of Latin America. Five media forms serve as focal points for this course: radio, photography, film, television, and digital media. The dialogue between these technologies and the arts will serve as a point of departure for discussing central issues in Latin American culture such as identity and autonomy, mestizaje and hybridity, uneven technological development, peripheral modernities, and globalization. This course will also focus on instruction methods, strategies and approaches to teach media literacy in the Spanish classroom.
56: 940: 572 Heritage Speakers in the US
In this class students will review different theories of bilingual development and methods of language teaching with the aim of understanding how to approach language instruction in classes populated by heritage speakers. We will examine best practices in the classroom and discuss different techniques and approaches to develop effective and creative instructional materials.
56: 940: 573 Conceptual Engagement in Spanish
The course explores the theoretical, research, pedagogical implications of using a sociocultural approach in the K-12 classroom, paying special attention to the implementation of Concept‐Based Teaching and Transformative Research applied to the Spanish L2 classroom. Throughout this course students will engage in a range of reflective activities that will enable them to study the philosophical bases and main theoretical tenets of a Sociocultural theory of mind and its application to the field of Second Language Teaching, understand how research is carried out following Sociocultural principles, as well as design and develop a pedagogical sequence based on Sociocultural Theory.
56:940:591 Independent Study in Spanish
This course allows students to work closely with a professor on specific themes and issues. It is an essential component of every graduate program since it allows for some flexibility to fulfill all credit requirements.
56:940:592 Special Topics
A course in a selected topic at the graduate level and not offered in the regular curriculum. Prerequisites: Permission of instructor.
56:940:620 Golden Women
The course explores how female Spanish and Latin American writers of all ages exercised textual authority in order to challenge existing gender assumptions and conventions. Students will gain a deeper understanding on the socially constructed perceptions and definitions of womanhood; the ways in which factors of gender, class, ethnicity, race, and sexuality intersect; and the relationship between women’s writing and the traditional literary canon.
56:940:622 Race and Ethnicity in Early Modern Latin World
A course that explores the complex genealogies of Spanish and Latin American racial identities. It traces how such identities were forged in the difficult experiences of their colonial past to the changing democratic realities of their present. Students will learn to identify and evaluate strategies of domination, representation, and resistance.
56:940:624 The Inquisitorial Mind
This course studies not only the emergence, workings, and controversial historical legacies of the notorious Spanish institution, but also examines and the theological and political framework that forged it, establishing perplexing parallels between past and present institutionalized exclusions and/or prosecutions. Thus, the course is particularly focused on the way in which societies learn to demonize its “others” by using criteria based on gender, race, religion, or a suitable combination of all three. In exploring why certain periods are more prone or willing than others to organize institutionalized responses to eradicate narrowly-defined enemies, students will gain a deeper understanding on the legal, political, and institutional implications of any kind of religious orthodoxy while dispelling popular myths associated with the subject.
56:940:625 Early Modernity in the Latin World
This course evaluates the gaps and frictions of early modernity of the Spanish empire. It explains why a very particular cultural “modern” sensibility shaped literary sensibilities such as the Picaresque and crystallized in pioneer genres like the novel. It is also concerned with materials conditions, such as the conflictive relationship between capital, sovereignty, and authority, or diasporas produced by cross-cultural encounters and new global orders. Students will gain a greater critical understanding of the interplay of content and context in literary works learning to infer, examine, and evaluate the value systems inscribed in such texts.
56:940:628 Picturing the Spanish Golden Age
When applied to the acquisition of a second language, the use of the visual arts encourages active learning and abstract thinking as complex concepts become more relevant and accessible to them. Art-based instruction also dramatically expands the range of experiential learning available to the classroom, promoting cultural curiosity, scientific inquiry, and ownership over ideas. This course provides the tools necessary for designing and implementing an effectively art-based curriculum that develops such cross-cultural communicative skills, as they become increasingly demanded by today’s interconnected world.
56:940:667 Clinical practice I
First semester of clinical practice. Full-time student teaching in approved schools under the supervision of a cooperating teacher and a college supervisor.
56:940:668 Clinical practice II
Second semester of clinical practice. Full-time student teaching in approved schools under the supervision of a cooperating teacher and a college supervisor.
56:940:681 Psychological Foundations of Teaching Spanish
This course explores the psychological conditions learning strategies, and cognitive and emotional responses required in the teaching and learning of Spanish as a Second Language. Effective teachers need to understand the learners’ cognitive make up (physical, social, and moral development), and how their development shapes their learning capacities (intelligence, special needs, multiculturalism, motivation). Through an in‐depth study of the principles of Sociocultural theory in its connections with the field of Second Language Learning, Teaching, and Assessment, this course is designed to promote an understanding of how learning proceeds as mediated cognitive development, and develop the pedagogical skills that pre-service and in-service teachers need to optimize learning and second language development in the Spanish classroom.