SP 444 - Advanced Spanish Language in Context: Narratives of Experiential Learning

This course is designed for students with an advanced Spanish level with the objective of improving written and oral expression while interacting with local population and discovering the city of Granada. Throughout the course, students will explore the liminalities and connections of the different narratives that convey the cultural landscape of Granada. The activities designed for this purpose include experiential learning, relevant readings and critical reflections, as well as grammatical conceptual thinking. The digital storytelling project will be an opportunity for students to find their own narrative towards intercultural and linguistic learning during their study abroad experience.

Research has demonstrated that study abroad can enhance every aspect of language ability. One of the most important general findings of this research is, however, that study abroad is most beneficial for the development of abilities related to social interaction. Students who go abroad can learn to do things with words, such as requesting, apologizing, or offering compliments, and they may also learn to interpret situations calling on such speech acts in ways that local people 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).