SP 121 - Spanish for Professions

By the end of the course, students will develop an elementary foundation in five key skills: intercultural communication, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. These skills will be applied to accomplish various basic needs within business contexts as outlined in the learning outcomes below.

Specifically, students will be able to describe people, companies, job roles, and workplaces; discuss preferences related to work and business events; and talk about daily routines, professional experiences, and future aspirations. Additionally, students will learn to express opinions, give recommendations, and recognize a wide range of common business interactions.

Research has demonstrated that study abroad can enhance every aspect of language ability. One of the most important general findings of this research is that study abroad is most beneficial for developing abilities related to social and professional interaction.

Students who go abroad can learn to perform various speech acts, such as requesting information, apologizing, or offering compliments in a business setting, and they may also learn to interpret situations requiring these speech acts in ways that local professionals do. In short, and logically, study abroad has been shown to enhance the aspects of communicative competence that are most difficult to foster in classroom settings (IES Abroad MAP for Language and Intercultural Communication, p. 6).