Spanish 211 was the second Spanish class I was required to take at Longwood. This class satisfied the foreign language perspective. I had attempted to take Japanese, in Japan as it is not offered at Longwood, during a semester abroad trip I was planning however was told that because of the rules around perspectives it would not be accepted as a credit to satisfy this requirement. Also, note the below quote from the description of Spanish 211, this makes it clear that the goal of the course is to learn how to better speak the language, communicate effectively with other speakers, and learn more about the culture. All of these goals also apply to the perspective requirement and would have been satisfied by any class for Japanese in Japan as I would be learning from native speakers, interacting with them all day every day, and truly immersing myself in the culture. The rules around transferring credits to satisfy perspectives are not to help the student become a citizen leader but to increase revenue for the university and I find it ridiculous. Due to COVID-19, I was not able to go to Japan so I would have needed to take this course, either way, I am not mad at the university for that but for the lack of willingness to accommodate alternate learning opportunities.
A course designed to develop intermediate interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational communication in Spanish. Students will integrate themes from various disciplines in their exploration of the cultures of Spanish-speaking countries.
Longwood University Course Descriptions
During this class, I found myself not knowing things that were expected of me as I was supposed to learn them in my previous class (Spanish 111) however I did not. What was most surprising about this was that I had the same professor for both classes, so I would have assumed she would know we didn’t learn that. I also took these courses back to back so there should not have been too much forgotten. I was able to use the textbook to look ahead at the vocabulary somewhat and then focused in class on catching up on words I didn’t know using context. I also studied some with the person sitting next to me who had a different professor from the year before to help with understanding what was happening a bit better. By the time of the tests I had studied the material enough to do well but still struggled on the essay writing portion feeling like I did not have enough understanding of basic vocabulary to fill out the prompts fully. This said the grading was fair and understood the limitations of our knowledge of these parts. The hardest part of the class for me was our analysis of Pan’s Labrinth in class as I didn’t have enough time to really understand what was going on, answer the questions in Spanish (often new words), and look out for the next. This may be an issue on my part as I do not know how everyone else in the class was doing on this assignment.
Above is Pan’s Labrinth assignment which I found to be the most difficult. This was also the last assignment before the final exam so it gives a good insight into the final difficulty of the class. The difficulty of the final exam was far easier for me personally though given that I can re-read and take my time on a final but not go back during the movie (being played for the entire class).
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