In 2002 the Applied Spanish: Community Studies minor at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) was approved by the Tennessee Board of Regents. The Applied Spanish minor is a 21 credit-hour interdiscipli nary minor that melds community-based service-learning with traditional classroom methodology. This article presents a curricular model that other institutions may wish to follow. It describes the origin and development of the program, its courses and service-learning opportunities, and the results of a survey that evaluates benefits to students in the areas of cultural understanding and knowledge of Hispanics, language learning attitudes, leader ship skills, social responsibility, and career impact.

Applied Spanish in the University Curriculum: A Successful Model for Community-Based Service-Learning

Greater interest from students, universities, and communities has increased pressure on faculty to design and implement service-learning courses. Often with no prior experience and limited institutional and programmatic guidance, faculty must make their way through a growing body of literature on service-learning. This article presents a novice service-learning instructor's guide to designing, implementing, and assessing a service-learning course through the example of an upper-division Spanish translation course. I present theoretical explanations of why service-learning works and how to design and assess the course while delineating the fundamental principles of successful service-learning. Results show that service-learning strengthens student learning and civic engagement and that service-learning courses may be led successfully by instructors with limited time and experience.

Taking Spanish into the Community: A Novice's Guide to Service-Learning

At a time when languages in universities are under pressure, community-based learning language courses can have many positive benefits: they can increase interest in language learning, they can foster greater engagement with learning, and they can encourage active learning, creativity and teamwork. These courses, which link the classroom and the community, help address needs in the community, share resources and make languages more visible. By giving students the opportunity to engage in practical work, their transferable skills are enhanced. The gap between the university and community is closed and positive attitudes towards language learning are fostered. This paper examines research into community-based learning and language courses and the effect that the approach has on students. Using an example of such a course in NUI Galway, the author gives voice to the student experience of a CBL course and its impact on their motivation, their style of learning and their attitudes towards language learning. Fi...

Beyond the four walls: community-based learning and languages

We report on the service-learning component of a Spanish-language Saturday school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for elementary-aged Spanish-language heritage learners and also examine the newly forming Latino community served by this innovative program. The US Spanish-speaking population is growing throughout the country, resulting in greatly increased numbers of English language learners who enter the school system as heritage Spanish speakers. The current study provides compelling data that first language Spanish literacy support can be very beneficial for these students as they acquire English literacy. Such efforts also provide numerous experiential- and service-learning opportunities for native Spanish speakers, as well as for intermediate and advanced second language Spanish learners in this study. Both first- and second-language service-learners benefit from the Spanish immersion environment of the Saturday program outlined. Moreover, our case-study findings show that heritage students in the program and their largely immigrant parents are forming part of a diverse community that values bilingualism, Spanish literacy, and academic achievement.

Linking Service-Learning Opportunities and Domestic Immersion Experiences in US Latino Communities: A Case Study of the "En Nuestra Lengua" Project

During the spring 2005 semester, Gettysburg College Spanish 305 students visited local Latino migrant families on a weekly basis to provide basic computer training and ESL classes as part of a study on how computer training of Latino migrant parents affects K-2 Children's reading skills. In this descriptive, interpretative and theoretical case study, Gettysburg College students acted as tutors and visited Latino migrant homes to deliver IMPACCT (Integrated Migrant Parent and Child Computer Training) to eight limited-English-proficient Latino migrant families. This paper shows the many academic, social, and cultural benefits that teaching Latino/migrant parents brought to Gettysburg College students. Students developed strong relationships with families and improved their Spanish skills and cultural awareness while helping the families to support their children's use of computers to increase their reading skills.

College Students as Tutors: Learning from the Latino Community of Adams County

At the AATSP Annual Conference in Chicago in 2003, several service-learning practi tioners congregated following the last of several service-learning sessions. As they shared experiences, frustrations, ideas, goals, and excitement, the idea emerged to plan a workshop for Acapulco in 2004. The entire process was an organic outgrowth resulting from deep communication among the group of people who continued the dialogue throughout the year. By means of electronic communication, Richard Raschio, Gresilda Tilley-Lubbs, Ethel Jorge, and Silvia L?pez committed to presenting a workshop with two follow-up sessions that would allow the conversation to continue throughout the conference. As the four collaborated, they made and finalized the plans that evolved into the presentations that took place at the conference. It is necessary to include the emergence of the workshop and sessions in order to articulate the excitement that has been part of the growth of the service-learning movement in the AATSP. Beginning with the meeting in Brazil in 2002, faculty members representing a variety of academic situations from high school through higher education have continued to meet and brainstorm about how to include the community in their language classrooms. The excitement has increased as growing numbers of faculty members have decided to include service-learning in their Spanish and Portuguese classes. Each time service-learning practitioners meet, the final result of the meeting is to plan for the next time they can come together from various geographical locations to share ideas. The workshop and sessions described herein represent the fruits of the discussion begun in Chicago; the plans for New York 2005 included in the concluding statements represent the results of the conversation begun in Acapulco.

Service-Learning: Taking Language Learning into the Real World

Writings during the last decade have helped to elucidate the role and portrayal of women characters in Galdos's works, but little has been written specifically about Galdos's mother figures, particularly in two late novelas contemporaneas-Casandra and El caballero encantado, novels at some distance from his nineteenth-century realist fiction. A close reading of these novels with focus on the mother figures draws upon studies of myth and fairy tales to reveal that Galdos deliberately resuscitates and then abandons the monstrous mother figure and instead substitutes and reinforces certain nineteenth-century notions of what the ideal woman should be: a caring and life-sustaining mother.

Silvia López

Papers

Service-Learning: Taking Language Learning into the Real World

From Monstrous to Mythical: The Mother Figure in Galdos's Casandra and El caballero encantado