Berkshire Community College
Department of Languages and Communications
Prof. Lois B. CooperClass: Melville 110 or Melville 112 (FRED)
Office: Melville 223Student Meetings: MWF: 11am-12:10pm
Lab: Melville 112Videoconferences with Profe: W: 11am (may be Voice: 413.236.4615 (messages checked irregularly) rescheduled; sessions may be added)
E-mail: (best contact)
Intermediate Spanish II ~ Sp 202 ~ Spring 2013
Distance Learning Version
Office Hours by arrangement only:
Students wishing to have a video or phone conference should email Profe to make an appointment.
Successful completion of this course satisfies the
“Community and Global Awareness” Core Competency Requirement.
Successful completion of assignments related to your Segundavida blog satisfies the “Technical Literacy” Core Competency Requirement.
Note: If you are graduating in May and are need other Core Competencies to graduate, talk to Profe before then end of the third week of classes to discuss the possibility of devising assignments together that will satisfy the Core Competencies you need.
To learn more, seeSpanish Program Blog ( Spanish Classes > Core Competencies).
/ Cuadros, Españolintermedio, Volume 4, 2012: Spain, Long, Carreira, Madrigal, Valsco, Swanson: (This edition comes bundled with an electronic “passkey” for the online version of the Student Activities Manual.)ISBN-9781133427360Find the textbook online at a lower cost at
There may be a loose-leaf plus iLrn bundle as well as a paperback plus iLrn bundle.(Loose-leaf is less expensive, but more difficult to sell at the end of the semester.)
This is the link for Paperback plus Ilrn- (Paperback is more expensive, but easier to sell at the end of the semester.)
Use this Course Code for our Cuadros, Volume 4 class: FDXNKG333when you input your textbook key and sign up for your online iLrnCuadros, Volume 4study materials.
Contacting Professor Cooper
As you know, I am on sabbatical and living out of the country, this semester. In no way does this mean that you will not be able to reach me. Any time you would like to arrange a phone call, audio or videoconference or live chat, send me an email to arrange an appointment for our meeting. Write me at: or at: . The latter email address is the one that is connected to the Google + “Circle” (and video “Hangout” that we have already established as the platform for our videoconferences and videoclasses.
What your BCC Catalog says about Intermediate Spanish II (SPA 202):
SPA-202Intermediate Spanish II
4 Credits Offered Spring
A continuation of SPA 201. Class activities are designed to develop mastery of listening, reading, speaking, and writing in Spanish. Students work with written and audio materials of increasing difficulty to further promote accuracy and fluency. In addition to studying works from Spain and Latin America, students write essays and conduct debates on contemporary topics. This class, conducted in Spanish, meets four hours a week. One additional hour of laboratory is required. Prerequisite: C- or better in SPA 201, SPA placement, or permission of the instructor.
Class Organization
Spanish 202 is a four-credit course, which normally meets three times a week, with students spending an extra hour a week in our language lab, FRED.
This iteration of SPA 202 is a distance class of a sort, since I am not on campus, this semester. Your success in this class and in your efforts at improving and growing your Spanish still relies greatly on interaction between you and your classmates. For this reason, you will still be required to meet to study together either in FRED or in M110, at the regularly scheduled time: MWF, 11am-12:10p. (Contact Profe to discuss issues related to class schedule.)
If you and your classmates decide to change your meeting time or if any of you is not able to attend any of the sessions, please email me to let me know at: . I will be keeping track of your attendance, throughout.
Why? This is because your attendance is still required and your vigorous participation in the class is still critical to your success. Since Spanish is a living language and since you all want to be working on your oral expression, group work and collaborations will be essential to your success.
Whenever possible, Wednesdays will be our videoconferencing day, during which we will meet as a class. It is essential that you not miss any of these Wednesday meetings.
Why? Wednesday videoconferences will give you the chance to show off your progress and to ask me questions. Further, videoconferences will enable me to assess your performance so that I can provide encouragement when you need it and praise when you deserve it.
We will use Google + as our platform for interacting and videoconferencing. (We have already created our “Circle” and our “Hangout” for audio- and videoconferencing and live chatting.) Please note that there may be timesat which I will either have cancel videoconferences or change the dates for these conferences. Those dates will be posted on your iLrn Assignment Calendar as soon as I know them. (Note that there are no videoconferences for April 10th and for April 17th. See the Tentative Class Schedule, below.)
After we put in place all the technology we will be using to facilitate our communication, classes will be conducted entirely in Spanish. When you work together on non-videoconference days, you will promise to speak Spanish (unless there are issues that you are incapable of negotiating in Spanish, even with the help of wordreference.com.) In any case, keep your interventions in English to a minimum!
Why is it critical that you speak as much Spanish as possible? As we said last semester, you must make LOTS of mistakes in order to learn to speak a language well. The more mistakes you make, the more you’re participating, and the more you’re learning!
Documenting Your Attendance and Progress on Assignments and Individual and Group Projects
I would like you to document class time you spend together, so I have a sense of how you are working to support one another's learning and so that I can follow the evolution of group projects.
How will you do this? I have created an Attendance, Study and Project Journal. (I have copiedthe form at the end of this document and I will be post it to the SPA 202 page on the Spanish Program Blog.) Each of you will send me your Journal each week. We will use the journal to keep track of attendance, but also to help you focus on what you have accomplished, what you would like to work more on, what you need help on.
Specifics on This Class:
This Intermediate Spanish class will enable you to start with the skills you have already acquired in Spanish and begin to explore and grow in ways you wish to grow.
When you start working with Cuadros, Volume 4, you will notice many features resemble those in Nexos, the text we used in SPA 101-102-201. This is because Cuadros, Volume 4was written by the same authors as Nexos.
Cuadros, Volume 4 is intended as a one-semester Intermediate Spanish text for review, but also as a tool to enable you to widen and deepen your ability to express yourself in Spanish, to improve your understanding of spoken Spanish and to read more complex texts in Spanish on a wider range of topics than ever before. Naturally, this text provides you with opportunities to write more in Spanish. I will encourage you to push past the simpler written formulas you have already mastered so that you can express yourself in writing with greater specificity and sophistication.
You will have a good deal of autonomy, here, AND you will be expected to be committed to and engaged by your own program of study.
Your Individualized Grammar Review:
It is natural that you make mistakes in your writing and speaking at this level. (Indeed, you will continue to make mistakes even when your level is “near native”!) As the semester unfolds, the mistakes you make in class, in your oral evaluations and in your writing will help you and your instructor design a plan of individualized grammar review that you will conduct on your own. This grammar study will supplement what we will be doing as a class. Students will be encouraged (and at times required) to use drill and practice websites unrelated to our textbook to attain greater mastery of grammatical concepts that present particular difficulties. If you are having real trouble learning to use the imperative mode properly, for example, your instructor may provide you with sites to visit to practice, so you can learn it once and for all! Your final grade will reflect your effort and success working independently on grammar.
Your Hispanic Identity: Segundavida:
If you completed the first part of this intermediate sequence, you have already invented an Hispanic alter-ego with a Spanish name, country, personal and family history. You have already created a blog onto which you have posted written work on your family and some preliminary research on your country. You have discovered popular or folk music from the Spanish-speaking world (some produced by artists from your adopted country) and you have created a playlist of this music that is displayed on your blog. You have posted photographs of your country and you have also made Voicethreads about your lives. Some of you may have uploaded your own performance of a song of your choice. You have also created a passport for your alter ego and you have visited the pages of your classmates so that you could learn about the culture of their countries (and earn passport stamps for what you learned!)...You have created a valuable record not just of what you have learned, but of your progress in Spanish.
This is WONDERFUL!
This semester, you will deepen the complexity of your alter ego. You will continue your research on your adopted country and you will continue to post your work to your blog.
How will the work I do on my blog be different, this semester?
SegundavidaNewspaper and Video Projects: First, each of you will be reading newspapers and/or magazines from your countries every week. You should do a Google search to identify the newspapers in your country. You might want to follow a national one as well as a local one, from your own city or town. (If you could give the paper a glance every day, this would be even better! The more exposure to the language you have, the better!)
You will find the language of the newspaper to be above your proverbial "pay grade," as I am fond of saying. Do not worry about this. You will be using help you read and understand your newspapers. Go to that site, type in the url(web address) of the site for your newspaper (or for any Spanish language site you want to read, for that matter). Place your cursor over any word you do not know. Poof! Magically, a dictionary entry for the word you don't know will appear. A splendid feature of that it keeps track of all the words you look up, so you can review and study and increase your vocabulary. This is truly a wonderful tool!
You will be skimming your country’snewspaper, at first, to determine what the major issues are in the news of your country. After the first three weeks or so, you will narrow your focus and choose one issue (or two) to follow for most of the rest of the semester. You will do "tweets" (tuiteos), first in our Google + “circle” and then on your blog. These tuiteos are short posts that provide an idea for all of us of what's going on in your country.
At times, I may ask you to search for articles in your countries’ newspapers that relate to themes we are learning about in Cuadrosand to post a tuiteo on what you learned. This activity will encourage you to explore the following topics as they relate to your own, adopted countries: technology, immigration (and emigration), what it means to be a citizen, the environment, politics and the economy, globalization and global perspectives on issues facing your countries. I may also ask you to create PowerPoints with embedded oral presentations on this work that you will post to your blogs.
Once we have found the way to link all our blogs, you’ll post your tuiteos just on your blogs so that you can follow one another's blogs, read one anothers' tuiteos, and to comment on them...VERY briefly.
The final written assignment of the semester will be a detailed summary of the issue you will have followed in your countries' newspapers, along with a reaction to how these issues affected your Segundavida life. The final Voicethread (or video, posted individually on your blog) will be a news broadcast version of the issue you will have followed. Feel free to jazz up this video with news footage you harvest from national television broadcasts in your countries or from YouTube videos. Remember: You’re the broadcast journalist, the presentador(a), so you have full control over the content of your video.
Since you are now in full control of your blogs and since you have a better sense of who your Segundavida alter egois, as a person, I will be asking all of you for suggestions for blog entries for you all to work on. You have written in the past about your family members’ personalities and physical descriptions. You know some of their professions. What other details do you want to develop about your family members? When you are reading about themes like politics, the environment, the economy of your countries or of your towns, you might want to weave your family members into narratives about those issues. Was your sister involved in a local campaign to improve the schools? Were your parents concerned about the quality of the water where you live? Did you demonstrate in your town for higher pay for public employees? You are the author of your Segundavida, so it is YOU who decides!
Cuadros, Volume 4:
This text provides readings from Spain and Latin America and topics that will provide us with many occasions for debate and discussion. The Tentative Class Schedule at the end of this document has an abbreviated version of the calendar for the semester that lists the specific days devoted to the chapters we will study, chapter tests, vacations.
Your Homeworkand the Cuadros, Volume 4 Website
Homework in this class involves daily work and preparation. In some classes, it is possible to save up all the homework for the week to do in one, long session. You already know that language learning is cumulative, that it requires daily practice. Homework assignments are designed to provide this practice that will lead to mastery of new grammar and vocabulary. Make sure you work on your Spanish a little, every day!
You may already be familiar with the Nexoswebsite. You can access the site for Cuadros 4 at the same address: (This URL is listed in the bottom margin of every page of this syllabus.) Once you have signed into iLrn, you will see Cuadros, Volume 4 activities right on your “dashboard.” If you have any problems logging into your iLrn page, let me know.
You will find assignments listed on your calendar in the iLrn site for Cuadros, Volume 4:
Much of the assigned work on theiLrnCuadros, Volume 4Quia site, online, is graded automatically. I will not assign a letter grade for individual assignments (with the exception of compositions, which are graded).
Your homework grade will reflect the number of activities you attempt and the quality of your engagement with the online homework. (You cannot receive a lower homework grade for making mistakes on these assignments. You LEARN from making mistakes, and what better time to make them than on homework?) If it is clear, though, that you race through the work just to get it done without taking the time to study the textbook material, first, your homework grade will suffer.
Take the time to complete homework whenever it is assigned and use it as an opportunity for practice and review. You’ll find this regular practice will help you become proficient in the language and you’ll be happy you made the commitment to it!
Note: I do not assign all the possible online assignments in iLrn. The more you complete, the better your homework grade! Most assignments are from Student Activities Manual part of iLrn, not from the Textbook part.
Consider the online activities as tools to help you master the concepts you are studying and learning for each chapter. If you feel you have not yet mastered a vocabulary or grammar component, do more of the activities online. Remember: The more you practice, the more effectively you will learn and succeed on written tests and quizzes and oral evaluations.
I will not accept any homework after the date of the chapter test. You will receive a homework grade of ZERO for work you fail to complete by test day for a given chapter.