Español - Segunda Lengua

Spanish as a Second Language

SmrtzT&T - This image was taken from https://www.actfl.org/

The Spanish Course

The Spanish Program at SmrtzT&T offers students a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the target language, literature, and hispanic culture in a set of language-learning modules. The program offers a series of core school, college and career professional development sessions in Spanish from Novice Low to Advanced High, Superior or even Distinguished Level courses via online and onsite teaching and tutoring sessions. 

A learner-centered approach provides opportunities for students to practice critical and creative thinking, problem solving, and decision making. This involves recall, application, analysis, synthesis, prediction and evaluation; all of which contribute to the development and enhancement of conceptual understandings. A learner-centered approach also encourages students to demonstrate ownership of their ideas and to reflect on and monitor their thinking as they make decisions and take action when speaking a world language different from their own.

The three modes of communication—Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational—defined in the World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, are foundational to the Spanish Language and Culture course. This course provides students with opportunities to demonstrate their proficiency in each of the three modes in the Intermediate to Advanced range, as described in the ACTFL Performance Descriptors for Language Learners.

The three modes of communication

The online and onsite sessions in Smrtz T&T´s program provides students an opportunity to interact in all three modes of communication—interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational. The three modes of communication describe how learners use and interact with language in real-world contexts. Below, we present a brief overview of these modes and the types of activities in our curriculum that effectively engage them.

The Common Core strands of Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening are captured in the standards for learning languages’ goal area of Communication, by emphasizing the purpose behind the communication in all three modes: Interpretive, Interpersonal and Presentational.

The content of the program is organized according to the national standards, blending the two focus goal areas of Communication and Cultures into one standard. The remaining goals of Connections, Comparisons, and Communities are embedded within Communication and Cultures to ensure all language learners expectations at any level of school, college-, career and world- ready.