Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Spanish 150 is offered for six hours of transferable credit.  It meets six hours per week.  This course satisfies part of the foreign language requirement for the B.A. degree, counts as an elective for the A.A. degree, and contributes to the general education requirement for other Associate Degrees.  

Students successfully completing Spanish 150:

1. Manage common interactions, in both oral and written forms, in predictable settings using the present and beginning work in the past and future tenses.
2. Apply circumlocution and inference skills, at a beginning level, when navigating selected real world situations in Spanish.
3. Recognize and identify linguistic and cultural diversity within the Spanish-speaking world and how it differs and/or relates to one’s own culture.
4. Identify selected historical and cultural movements in the target culture through exposure to literature, art, music, film and/or performing arts in the target language.
5. Acquire and apply strategies for analyzing authentic materials in the target language.

Students are expected to attend all classes, participate actively in classroom activities, and prepare oral and written homework assignments.  Students may work with bundled media or related web media, and they may meet with the teacher or tutors.  After the introduction to the course, Spanish will be used in the classroom at all times.  Students should plan to spend about one hour in preparation and practice outside of class for each class hour.  Students are encouraged to register for an optional, 1-credit conversation class.  

 
Beginning with the first day of class, students are assessed by their active participation, homework, in-class activities such as presentations and oral interviews.  Regular attendance is also required to achieve a passing grade.   

Spanish 150 emphasizes the acquisition and correct use of pronunciation, grammatical structures and cultural concepts for the purpose of communication in Spanish.  The themes and skills listed below are not necessarily presented in order; presentation of these items depends on the teacher, textbook and the make-up of the student population.   

Possible structures presented

1. Gender and plural forms
2. Noun-adjective agreement
3. Present tense of verbs
4. Possessive pronouns
5. Immediate future tense of verbs
6. Present progressive tense of verbs
7. Forming questions/responses
8. Some formal commands
9. Ordinal and cardinal numbers
10. Reflexive verbs
11. Demonstrative adjectives
12. Comparisons of equality and inequality
13. Some preterit tense  

Topics for active communication 

1. Simple greetings and leave takings 
2. Discussing nationalities and language spoken 
3. Descriptions of people, clothes, objects, etc. 
4. Expressing likes and dislikes  
5. Expressing preference and desire 
6. Making and accepting invitations 
7. Telling time 
8. Days of the week and months of the year 
9. Weather 
10. Family 
11. Age 
12. Describing daily routines 
13. Asking about and describing states of being 
14. Living accommodations