The course stresses cultural awareness, collaborative learning and the use of technology to complete assignments and research topics of interests. This course fulfills the foreign language general education requirement. Students acquire cultural awareness by coming in contact with the music, art, writings and customs of daily life situations of the Hispanic people. This course enables students to advance to a more sophisticated level of conceptualization and reasoning in Spanish, and tailors their language to a social role, audience, and context in the academic community and beyond. Extending the educational process, students are required to keep a portfolio on cross-cultural interactions, comparing current issues and events in this society and in Hispanic societies.
Students also practice their writing skills by reporting on several related topics.
Students access different Hispanic news media links on the Internet and bring to class current issues for class discussion. These issues may be used as entries in the students' personal portfolios. Through discovery they begin a self-awareness process of their own personal and cultural identity and that of the Latinos in this society. This course examines Latin American civilization and culture, including not only Spanish America, but also those of Haiti and Brazil. Aspects of the geography, early and present history of every country, and the parallel economic, political, social, intellectual and cultural conflicts and issues that have affected, in one way or another, the character of its people.