Latin American And Iberian Cultures · Columbia University
imperative, subjunctive, conditional and other grammatical structures along with themed vocabulary based on the chapter
I really improved my writing and oral skills with the constant CourseWorks posts, essays, and presentation. Apart from improving my Spanish skills, I learned about fascinating texts that I had never seen before.
Indirect speech, subjunctive and the use of conditional conjugation.
Moderately heavy reading twice a week. You can get away with missing the reading a few times, but don't make a habit of it. While some readings were long, few were particularly dense. Assignments graded generously. Attendance (10%), ten short blog posts (20%), in-class presentation (20%), final paper (5-7 pages, 30%), final exam (20%, less difficult than regular CC).
Learned the subjunctive, conditional, future, imperfect and preterit tenses. Learned a lot of vocab and different cohesion techniques for writing in spanish.
THIS WOMAN CANNOT TEACH AND THERE IS NO BETTER WAY TO SAY IT. I've watched people struggle in her class and she teaches as though she is unsure of herself. Who ever vetted this woman's teaching style needs to checked out. If you have no background in Spanish you will never survive!. She teaches straight out of a book that we all have as though we can't read. Keep in mind she never taught conjugations in the class once. ISNT THAT WHAT SPANISH IS ABOUT?
I learned about various historical events and texts involving Hispanic Cultures
El pluscamperfecto; future perfect; using 'por la que', 'con el que' etc; using 'sino' and 'sino que'; el estilo indirecto; reported speech; emotions; conditional perfect; el imperfecto de subjuntivo + more. Course focuses largely on speaking with weekly speaking homeworks.
What is Anne Freeland doing at Columbia? She is far too lively, friendly, and adept at teaching to fit in with the rest of our professors. Nevertheless, while Anne is here, you really ought to take her class. She drove energetic class discussions with the experience of a professor far beyond her years. Themes which were part of the class include self-determination, authenticity, and the role of indigenous peoples. The readings balanced these themes well. The intellectual meta-commentary on them was missing, but I guess the class is "primary texts." She also has a background in Marxist anthropology, integrating this discourse into lectures. While most of it flew over everyone's head, I think it was a valuable foundation for other classes. Our group activities were hit or miss, and the availability of texts was a problem around the middle of the semester, but otherwise this was a class you could look forward to.
We learnt a bunch of tenses (future, conditional, subjunctive), when to use the gerund and a whole bunch of vocab.