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The Undergraduate Program

Undergraduate Student Learning Initiative

University of California, Berkeley
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
May 2, 2009

General Information

Spanish and Portuguese are the official languages of large and diverse populations in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. The major in Spanish and Portuguese responds to this geographic and cultural diversity and its rich historical background with five distinct options within the undergraduate major: four in languages and literatures: Options A; B; C, Plan 1; and C, Plan 2; and one, Option D, in languages and bilingual issues. These options are designed to prepare students for graduate work and for a wide range of careers requiring knowledge of Hispanic cultures, in such areas in the legal and medical professions, education, public health, social sciences, humanities, business, and the arts. It is particularly important for students considering a major in our department to be aware of the goals of each option and pathways toward those goals, provided by our departmental programs. Our departmental major is attracting increasing numbers of students; their process of choosing among the five options is best served by providing information that enables students to compare the goals and evaluation methods for each option.

The outlines of goals and pathways in our course options are intended to inform students of what is expected of them in each one, and thereby better equip them to choose the most appropriate option. The goals describe what we would like our majors to know and be able to do when they leave the Spanish and Portuguese program.

Information regarding areas of knowledge, skills, kinds of work required, evaluation methods, and careers for which these options prepare students, is provided below.

I.  Learning Goals for the Spanish and Portuguese Program:

Common to all five options is the goal of providing our undergraduate majors with a high level of proficiency in understanding, speaking, reading, and writing Spanish and/or Portuguese, in varying cultural contexts, with increasing emphasis on the latter two skills as students progress through the major. While lower division prerequisites emphasize the acquisition of all four skills, upper-division coursework approaches these aims through the process of addressing questions of linguistics and literary analysis in the full chronological and geographic range of Hispanic cultures. Each of the five options has a core writing component, and each includes courses designated as writing-intensive. The upper-division writing courses emphasize skill development in a subject-matter context. We see the research, organizational, and argumentative aspects of writing as skills that transfer across languages (thus Spanish and Portuguese as liberal arts majors), and also as markers of high proficiency in the target language.

It is important for students to have access to information regarding the areas of expertise, in not only geographic regions but also in the fields of literature and linguistics that enable them to become critical readers and thinkers. Students will learn to organize research projects using the full range of available sources, construct arguments, summarize positions, and present them in coherent, convincing written and oral form. The goals of our program distinguish between knowledge and skills:

Knowledge

Skills

The learning goals and required course work in the Department’s five distinct options for majors differ according to the geographic regions and languages studied: four in languages and literatures: Options A; B; C, Plan 1; and C, Plan 2; and one, Option D, in languages and bilingual issues. All five programs depend on distribution requirements to ensure that students are exposed to a variety of historical periods and cultural and geographical areas, and to the systematic study of linguistics.

Paths to Goals in the Spanish and Portuguese Program:

The detailed outline below contains the recommended sequences of classes for each option in the Spanish and Portuguese major, and indicates where in the major program we expect students to master the types of knowledge and skills we intend for our graduating seniors to acquire.

Writing-Intensive Courses in the Spanish and Portuguese program:

Each semester, on a rotating basis, two upper-division classes in Spanish will be designated as writing intensive, with specific emphasis on composition skills. The foundational courses for each option include grammar and composition courses, and writing-intensive courses, as specified in the following outline:

Prerequisites to Declaring Major

Foundational Courses

Core Courses Specific to Each Option (Upper Division)

Capstone courses

The undergraduate program in Spanish and Portuguese offers two kinds of courses for seniors to complete their major programs:

Evaluation of goals

All methods of evaluation require presentation of work in writing or orally in Spanish or Portuguese:


GOAL Pre-requisites Foundational Courses First 2 semesters of Option Requirements Further Option Requirements
Recognize a variety of genres and modes of writing(fiction, poetry, theater, and essay). Begin Extend    
Become conversant in the vocabulary associated with literary analysis in Spanish and/or Portuguese. Begin Extend Extend  
Connect literary texts with the historical and cultural contexts in which they were produced.     Begin Extend
Gain a critical awareness of distinctions and connections among the literatures of the Iberian peninsula and Latin America.     Begin Extend
Acquire the analytical resources of diverse literary approaches and theories.   Begin Extend Extend
SKILL        
Demonstrate the ability to interpret and analyze texts written in Spanish, Portuguese or Catalan. Begin Extend Extend  
Develop critical approaches appropriate to texts from a range of historical periods and regions of Latin America and the Iberian peninsula.   Begin Extend Extend
Distinguish among dialects and usages typical of diverse regions, social contexts, and historical periods in Spain and the Americas, including usages of heritage speakers (Opt. D).   Begin Extend Extend
Formulate and present, orally and in writing, well-organized, well-supported arguments in stylistically effective Spanish or Portuguese. Begin Extend Extend Extend
Practice responsible citation of sources in essays.   Begin Extend Extend