Instructor: Norma López-Burton, Department of Spanish and Classics, College of Letters and Science
Description: Mono-lingual Americans. Bi-lingual Mexicans. Polyglot Europeans. What happens—to our mind, our intellect, our feelings, our place in the world—when we learn a new language? And have teachers and their changing methodologies made learning new languages any easier? This one unit Freshman Seminar explores these questions: the mechanics of learning a second language, the role of the teacher and success or failure in language acquisition, how learning a new language impacts world views. This seminar will be especially instructive for any student thinking about living abroad or contemplating a career in language education.
Format: One hour per week for lecture and discussion. Discussions are based on short readings posted on the my.ucdavis.edu website. Before each class, students will read that class’s selection, will complete an online quiz and will need to be ready to speak out in class. Grading: Grades will be based on: nine quizzes based on the readings (40%); class participation (30%); and the final paper (30%).
About the Instructor: Norma López-Burton has been a Spanish instructor at UC Davis for 25 years and has supervised up to 30 Spanish instructors at a time for over a decade. She teaches Introductory Spanish (Spa 1, 2 and 3), Intermediate Spanish (Spa 21 and 22), Spanish Conversation (Spa 8) and the Teaching Methodology Graduate Seminar (Spa 390). She is the co-author of two university Spanish texts and awaits her own text, due in 2006.