Teaching

Teaching Spanish at Florida State University

At Florida State University, graduate students in Spanish Linguistics or Literature are housed within the Spanish Program, which falls within the Department of Modern Languages & Linguistics. All graduate students in the Spanish Program receive Graduate Teaching Assistantships which include stipends for living expenses and 80% tuition waivers for coursework.

Although we are designated as Graduate Teaching Assistants, our jobs are unique because we act as Instructors of Record in our courses, meaning that we are the sole instructor for each course that we teach. Spanish graduate students submit their teaching preferences between the first three levels of basic Spanish – Elementary Spanish I (SPN1120), Elementary Spanish II (SPN1121), and Intermediate Spanish I (SPN2220) – before each semester. See this webpage for more information about the Basic Spanish Language Program at FSU.

Additional teaching and supervising roles are available for experienced TAs. Course coordinators (advised by Dr. Anel Brandl and Dr. Michael Leeser) are selected at the beginning of each academic year to supervise the TAs and course curriculum for one of these three levels. Additionally, a handful of students are offered the opportunity to teach other Spanish courses, such as Intermediate Spanish II (SPN2240), Intermediate Spanish for Business and Finance (SPN2160), or courses within the Heritage track (i.e., Basic Spanish for Bilinguals/Heritage Learners (SPN2340) or Spanish for Heritage Speakers (SPN3350)). Outside of these classes, faculty teach all undergraduate and graduate courses in Spanish language, literature, and linguistics, and otherwise manage curricular design at FSU.

Course Descriptions

SPN1120 – Elementary Spanish I

SPN1120 (Elementary Spanish I) is a 4-credit-hour hybrid course that meets on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for 50-minutes each class day. The additional hour stems from the online component hosted by McGraw-Hill Connect, where students learn and practice new vocabulary/grammar concepts before they are expected to apply them in class. Following practices from communicative language instruction, my role as an instructor in SPN1120 was to scaffold activities in a way which applied the content at hand through facilitating conversations between students.

Materials are drawn from Chapters 1-4 of Sol y viento (3^rd edition; VanPatten, Leeser & Keating). Students’ grades are based on their participation/attendance in class, as well as their performance on exams, online homework, written assignments, and oral assignments/exchanges.

The specific learning objectives for this course as stated in the syllabus are as follows: “By the end of the semester, you will be able to communicate in basic Spanish about a variety of topics, including your daily schedule and activities, university life, shopping, family, and food. In addition, you will be able to understand, summarize and express opinions about portions of a Spanish film, Sol y viento.”

Term taught: Spring 2019

SPN1121 – Elementary Spanish II

SPN1121 (Elementary Spanish II), a continuation of SPN1120, is also a 4-credit-hour hybrid course that meets on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for 50-minutes each class day. In terms of format and course components, SPN1121 is the same as SPN1120, but materials for SPN1121 are drawn from the second-half of Sol y viento (3^rd edition; VanPatten, Leeser & Keating), Chapters 5-9. Students’ grades are also based on their participation/attendance in class, as well as their performance on exams, online homework, written assignments, and oral assignments/exchanges.

The specific learning objectives for this course as stated in the syllabus are the same as those of SPN1120: “By the end of the semester, you will be able to communicate in basic Spanish about a variety of topics, including your daily schedule and activities, university life, shopping, family, and food. In addition, you will be able to understand, summarize and express opinions about portions of a Spanish film, Sol y viento.”

Terms taught: Fall 2018, Summer B 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020 (Remote), Summer B 2020 (Remote), Spring 2021 (Remote), Summer A & B 2021 (Remote), Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022

SPN2220 – Intermediate Spanish I

SPN2220 (Intermediate Spanish I) is a 4-credit-hour hybrid course that meets on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for 50-minutes each class day. Like SPN1120 and SPN1121, the additional hour stems from the online component hosted by McGraw-Hill Connect, where students learn and practice new vocabulary/grammar concepts before they are expected to apply them in class. The instructor in this course is meant to act as a “communication facilitator” rather than a lecturer.

Materials are drawn from Chapters 1-6 of Así lo veo: Gente, Perspectivas, Comunicación (1^st edition; VanPatten, Leeser & Keating). Students’ grades are based on their participation/attendance in class, as well as their performance on exams, online homework, written assignments, and oral assignments/exchanges.

The specific learning objectives for this course as stated in the syllabus are as follows: “By the end of the semester, you will be able to interpret and express specific information in Spanish about personal values, how past experiences shape people’s charater, family structure and relationships, marriage, domestic violence and gender roles within relationships.”

Terms taught: Spring 2023, Summer B 2023, Summer A & Summer B 2024

SPN2340 – Basic Spanish for Bilinguals/Heritage Learners

SPN2340 is the first course of a two-course sequence intended for bilingual and heritage Spanish speakers. This course provides bilingual and heritage Spanish speakers with opportunities to study and analyze spoken, oral, and written Spanish in an academic setting; to improve strategic Spanish speaking, reading, and writing skills acquired through their use and study of the language; to build advanced vocabulary related to the student’s profession, including terminology to discuss language; and to be introduced to phonetics, syntax, and linguistic notions.

This course is designed for students who wish to fulfill the language requirement or pursue a minor/major in Spanish and: (a) grew up speaking Spanish but have not taken any Spanish courses, or (b) grew up speaking Spanish and may have started the basic Spanish course sequence outside FSU. The course follows selected material from Conversaciones escritas (3^rd edition; Potowski).

The learning objectives for this course are as follows: to improve strategic speaking and writing skills, to refresh and expand the comprehensive Spanish skills students have already acquired, to examine and recognize dialectal, social and contextual Spanish variations, to complete the acquisition of the grammar structures relevant to bilingual and heritage Spanish speakers, and to enhance one’s understanding and appreciation of Hispanic culture. By the end of the coruse, students will be able to use a formal register of Spanish in professional contexts, use specialized vocabulary and more advanced grammatical structures, select and express ideas and opinions on academic contexts and topics, effectively interact using fluency strategies and appropriate register, derive meaning through context, intonation, and situations from written and oral sources, produce accurate argumentative writing, and appreciate and recognize cultural and regional/dialectal variants of Spanish.

Terms taught: Fall 2023, Spring 2024