Requirements for the Major in French, German, and Spanish

A minimum of 34 hours is required for the undergraduate majors in German and Spanish. A minimum of 30 hours is required for the major in French. French, German, and Spanish offer two tracks for majors, the general and the applied language or business track.

Below is a sample plan of study. Consult your degree audit for your program requirements.

• PLO 1: Speaking objectives. Spanish majors are able to initiate, sustain, and bring to closure a variety of uncomplicated communicative tasks including those required in university classes taught entirely in the target language. They are able to narrate events and to describe people, places, and things using paragraph-length connected discourse. They can exchange or explain preferences, opinions, and emotions and provide advice on a variety of familiar and some concrete topics that they have researched, using connected sentences that may combine to form paragraphs and asking a variety of questions, often across various time frames. In both interpersonal and presentational communications, they should both demonstrate the ability to understand and be understood by interlocutors, including native speakers of Spanish who are accustomed to dealing with foreign speakers.\\n
• PLO 2: Writing objectives. Majors can write compositions and simple summaries and express their thoughts about familiar topics, using sentences and series of connected sentences often across various time frames. They are able to write compositions that demonstrate mechanical and grammatical correctness and that show a precise and correct use of vocabulary. Their compositions are also well organized, clear, and have some intellectual or artistic interest. Students are able to write down everything they are able to say aloud, using an appropriate register in description, narratives, personal expressions, etc. They are also able to write longer analytical texts on a variety of topics.\\n
• PLO 3: Grammar objectives. Majors are able to communicate clearly and correctly in the target language. Clear communication is based on the accurate use and understanding of correct forms and structures. Majors are able to identify forms and structures that they have mastered and to apply them appropriately within the contexts.\\n
• PLO 4: Literature Objectives. Majors should be familiar with a range of texts by various authors from different historical periods and several Hispanic areas and be able both to place them in relevant contexts and to discuss them in the target language using critical concepts derived from philosophical, stylistic, aesthetic and hermeneutical approaches, among others. The literary knowledge objective has two components: knowledge of literary history and critical reading skills.\\na) Literary history. Majors are able to situate literary texts into their literary, political and social-historical contexts and to classify literary texts according to historical genres (essay, novel, lyric poetry, drama etc.) and style periods (Renaissance, Classicism, Romanticism, etc.), as well as to evaluate their current relevance and the ongoing contributions to the tradition to which they belong. They should also be able to indicate which texts do not easily fit into given generic or stylistic categories and why. Majors should be able to use the library as well as electronic sources to gain access to relevant materials in and about literature in the target language.\\nb) Critical reading. Majors are able to understand the main idea and some pieces of information on familiar topics from sentences and series of connected sentences within a text and they can understand flow of events expressed in various time frames. They are able to understand fully and with ease short, non-complex texts that convey basic information and deal with personal and social topics to which the reader brings personal interest or knowledge. They can respond coherently and react critically to texts they have read, formulate relevant questions and problems, and show how these concerns may be clarified. They are able to identify, understand, and analyze the texts they have read.\\n
• PLO 5: Linguistic objectives. Students not only demonstrate the correct usage of the target language but also its structure, history, and varieties (dialectal, sociolectal, etc.). Students gain knowledge of the main branches of linguistics as they apply to Spanish (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) and apply this knowledge to their own use of the target language through the study of stylistics.\\n
• PLO 6: Culture Objectives. Majors can make comparisons between products and practices to help them understand perspectives in their own and other cultures. They can identify a number of texts, artifacts, monuments, terms, names, places, concepts, behavior, dates, and other cultural facts from periods of the target culture s history, geography, and institutions. Majors can establish these concepts within relevant contexts and explain in the target language their meaning or importance. They can recognize that significant differences in behaviors exist among cultures, use appropriate learned behaviors and avoid major social blunders. They can converse with peers from Spanish-speaking countries in familiar situations at school, work, or play, and show interest in basic cultural similarities and differences. Majors can use the library and electronic sources to gain access to relevant materials on the target civilization.