Second-Year Spanish

The Spanish Language Program at Stanford University has organized its program of study based on current research on second language acquisition and on an understanding of the extraordinary talents and abilities that Stanford students bring to the study of language. The primary focus of our two-year program is to develop students’ abilities to:  

• engage in interactions with speakers of Spanish for a variety of purposes and in a variety of contexts using socially and culturally appropriate forms for participating in conversations, establishing relationships with others, providing and obtaining information, expressing feelings and emotions, and expressing opinions;
• understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics and manifest growing awareness of the social and cultural influences shaping the production and use of knowledge in the Spanish- and English-speaking worlds;   
• present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of academic topics;   
• develop strategies that will allow students to continue to acquire and develop their Spanish outside of the classroom and throughout their lifetimes.

It is our goal to help you develop your proficiency in the language so that at the end of two years of study, you will be able to enroll in courses abroad taught in Spanish for native speakers. You will, of course, also be able to continue developing your Spanish proficiency in upper level Spanish courses here at Stanford including courses in Latin American and Spanish culture, language, and literature.

Objectives

The overarching goal of the second-year program is to prepare students for study abroad alongside native speakers of Spanish. This preparation is realized through increasing focus on presentational discourse, with emphasis on academic and professional registers of the language.

As in the first year of Spanish study, program objectives revolve around three key axes, but in the second year the emphasis shifts from interpersonal to presentational language: