Experiential learning has become an important part of the higher education curriculum in the United States. Due to the integration of a “Community Engagement” category in the Classification of Institutions of Higher Education in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2006, many colleges and universities have recently included experiential learning credits in their graduation requirements. Although appealing to most students and many faculty members, this type of course can be very challenging to design and execute, and, therefore, it frequently diverts from the students’ area of specialty. This article proposes a model for incorporating meaningful experiential learning in Languages for Specific Purposes programs. The purpose of this model is to facilitate the course design and execution processes for faculty, students, and community partners, and to maximize the linguistic and educational learning outcomes of the students and the professional needs of the community.
This entry provides a general description and an overview of Spanish for specific purposes (SSP) as an emerging subdiscipline within the languages for specific purposes (LSP) framework.
The teaching of foreign language advanced grammar (AG) at the college level nowadays continues largely to focus on form, with little attention to its functions and meanings. The practice agrees with neither the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (National Standards, 2006) nor the advances made in basic language teaching pertaining to the communicative purpose and context of language. Since both second language acquisition and pedagogical research demand more attention to contextual use, as well as the active participation of the student in the analysis of the forms, a revision of current practices becomes necessary. This article proposes the study of AG based on the use of unabridged authentic texts and the application of a Constructivist Grammatical Learning Approach.
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