Reviews all phases of communication skills with practice in understanding, speaking, and writing grammatically correct Spanish. Teaches specific components of Spanish grammar: the Spanish verbal system, the subjunctive, ser versus estar, and other problematic aspects of grammar.
In Spanish 303 we focused on practicing and learning how to improve our listening skills, speaking and writing skills. In addition, we also learned how to determine when to distinguish between particular tenses in grammar. For example, while working on compositions, we had to understand the difference between the imperfect and preterit tense when talking about the past, and when to use them in speaking and writing. This course allowed us to practice individual components of Spanish grammar. One piece of work that exemplifies my understanding of learning outcome 1 and 2 is one of my homework assignments which helped me focus on time expressions and proper use of grammar. Areas that I wish to develop further are: understanding comparisons between words such as ser and estar, and knowing when to use them when speaking or writing. It is also important for me to familiarize myself with the English words that correlate with those words. For example, in English there is only one way to say to be or I am. In Spanish, there are more than one way to express this but it depends on the tense, place and time, person etc. As English speakers, we tend to translate every word in Spanish to sound the same as in English but this is not the case according to the Real Academia Espanola. I would say that the most challenging lesson I had to learn in this class was understanding the rules of grammar, because I was never taught at home the rules of the Spanish language; I was just taught how to speak it. Knowing the rules will help me to speak better or properly and it will improve my writing abilities if I decide to translate certain documents for companies that I may work for in the future. In Spanish, the use of the subjunctive is used a lot more than in English. Another rule I learned in this class is that it is extremely important to practice writing and speaking Spanish frequently. Constant repetition will allow for better memorization skills.