Showing papers in "Hispania in 2012"

Teaching Pragmatics in the Foreign Language Classroom: Grammar as a Communicative Resource.

Abstract: This article focuses on the teaching of pragmatics in the Spanish as a Foreign Language classroom and examines the role of grammar as a communicative resource. It also aims to highlight the importance of teaching pragmatics from beginning levels of language instruction, with the spotlight on speech acts at the discourse level. After the concept of pragmatic knowledge, as one component of communicative language ability, is reviewed, this article will evaluate proposed pedagogical models for the teaching of pragmatics. We will then present ways for teaching grammar as a communicative resource through a look at the pragmatic functions of grammatical expressions used to express communicative action, such as the conditional, the imperfect, tag questions, impersonal expressions, and adverbials. The importance of classroom input and the role of pragmatic variation when teaching pragmatics in the classroom are also addressed. Finally, we propose a four-step pedagogical model for the teaching of pragmatics with online activities that can be used directly in the classroom, and this article closes with a recommendation that pragmatics be integrated into the language curriculum.

Gender and Heritage Spanish Bilingual Grammars: A Study of Code-mixed Determiner Phrases and Copula Constructions

Abstract: The study examined heritage speaker grammars and to what extent they diverge with respect to grammatical gender from adult L2 learners. Results from a preference task involving code-mixed Determiner Phrases (DPs) and code-mixed copula constructions show a difference between these two types of operations. Heritage speakers patterned with the control group of L1 Spanish/L2 English speakers for the copula/agreement constructions but differed from the control group for the DP conditions. We argue that it may be the case that the two operations (concord versus agreement) are processed differently by heritage speakers and people raised monolingually. If this idea is on the right track, then it can be assumed that it is processing and not different underlying representations that are the cause of the differences among the groups.

The Roles of Explicit Information and Grammatical Sensitivity in the Processing of Clitic Direct Object Pronouns and Word Order in Spanish L2

Abstract: In the present study, we examine the roles of 1) explicit information about language provided to learners prior to treatment and 2) aptitude (specifically grammatical sensitivity) within Processing Instruction. Forty-two learners of Spanish in their third-semester of study were divided into two groups: those who received explicit information (EI) prior to treatment (1EI) and those who did not (2EI). All participants also took the grammatical sensitivity portion of the Modern Language Aptitude Test. Treatment consisted of 50 structured input activities based on VanPatten and Cadierno (1993), in which learners heard a sentence and then indicated what they thought they heard by selecting one of two draw- ings. The processing problem for the treatment was the First Noun Principle and the target structure was clitic direct object pronouns with object-verb-subject (OVS) and subject-object-verb (SOV) word orders. Treatment was delivered via computer using SuperLab 4.0. Participants' responses were tracked and the measurement taken was trials-to-criterion: how long it took participants to begin processing sentences correctly. Results using ANOVA procedure revealed that EI did not make a difference: the 1EI and 2EI groups began processing sentences correctly at about the same point during the treatment. Results using standard r correlations also yielded no correlation between grammatical sensitivity and trials-to-criterion.

Targeting Oral and Cultural Proficiency for Medical Personnel: An Examination of Current Medical Spanish Textbooks.

Abstract: Demand for medical Spanish courses has grown with the rising needs of Spanish-speaking patients in the United States, but while there is no shortage of beginning medical Spanish textbooks, very few target the intermediate level. This article examines eighteen medical Spanish texts published in the last twenty years with respect to seven factors: 1) targeted proficiency level, 2) vocabulary, 3) oral and aural activities, 4) grammatical concepts, 5) pertinent cultural and sociolinguistic information beliefs, 6) pragmatic concepts, and 7) real-world situations. Although studies have shown negative medical outcomes associated with health providers' limited Spanish proficiency (Derose and Baker 2000; Diamond and Reuland 2009; Flores et al. 1998; Manson 1988), most texts currently aim at beginning levels. Only six of the books are designed for intermediate-level students, and only three offer communicative activi- ties targeting oral proficiency, even though oral and cultural skills have been prioritized for prehealth professionals (Lepetit and Chicocki 2002). Likewise, cultural information is often relegated to simplified paragraphs. Beginner textbooks vary considerably and generally do not offer communicative oral activities or adequate cultural information. Recommendations are offered for improvements in future intermediate textbooks with respect to each of the targeted categories.

The L2 Acquisition of Spanish Rhotics by L1 English Speakers: The Effect of L1 Articulatory Routines and Phonetic Context for Allophonic Variation

Abstract: This article offers a fine-grained investigation of how first-language (L1) phonetics involving English rhotics affect Spanish rhotic production by second-language (L2) learners. Specifically, this study investigates how different L1 English rhotic articulatory routines (retroflex-like and bunched-like) and the phonetic context that produces allophonic taps in English affect the accuracy of Spanish rhotic pronunciation by L2 learners. Tap and trill accuracy rates as well as English rhotic articulation were calculated from recordings of forty-eight beginning-level university Spanish students reading texts in Spanish and English. Results from multiple linear regressions show that English rhotic articulation is a significant predictor of trill accuracy and is a predictor of tap accuracy when controlling for amount of Spanish exposure. These results suggest that L1 articulatory routines affect the accuracy of tap and trill production. Results from a paired samples t -test show that a significantly high percentage of accurately produced taps in Spanish were found in words that follow the same articulatory context that produces taps in English. These results suggest that an overarching theory of the second language acquisition of phonology should consider how subtle differences in L1 articulatory routines and transfer of L1 phonetic context of allophones to L2 phonemes influences L2 speech production.

Assessing Language Attitudes through a Matched-guise Experiment: The Case of Consonantal Deletion in Venezuelan Spanish

Abstract: This investigation contributes to the understanding of language attitudes toward consonantal deletion by examining its perception using a matched-guise experiment (Casesnoves and Sankoff 2004; Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, and Fillenbaum 1960) with fifteen listeners. Two experiments were designed for testing language attitudes, one toward intervocalic /d/ deletion and one toward syllable-final /ɾ/ deletion. The findings of this research support the hypothesis according to which retention of syllable-final /ɾ/ is perceived as a prestigious variant in Venezuelan Spanish. However, our findings do not show a strong attitudinal evaluation in favor of /d/ retention. These results provide a contribution to the study of language attitudes using a perceptual task, a practice that is not very commonly used to assess a linguistic variable. The findings show that production studies present useful evidence, but may not necessarily reflect a speaker’s evaluation of linguistic variants.

Experiential Professional Development: Improving World Language Pedagogy inside Spanish Classrooms

Abstract: Experiential professional development (EPD), influenced by Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound design, was integrated in the classrooms of secondary Spanish teachers to create opportunities for them to learn to use communicative language teaching (CLT) through experience. Teachers collaborated with colleagues, students, and a researcher-consultant to design, teach, and reflect on communicative activities. This study asked: 1) how EPD affected the teachers' understandings of CLT and 2) how EPD affected the teachers' instruction. Qualitative analysis of multiple data provides evidence that, after participating in EPD, teachers were more willing to integrate communicative activities into their lessons while still using traditional classroom instruction.

Are African-American High School Students Less Motivated to Learn Spanish than Other Ethnic Groups?

Abstract: Although there is some evidence in the vague literature available to indicate that African Americans are underrepresented in foreign language studies, this issue has never been investigated with a focus on Spanish. Six hundred and thirty-one students enrolled in high school Spanish in a racially diverse school district in West Texas were surveyed and the data for the 102 African-American participants were compared to those of the remaining participants. Findings revealed that the initial enrollment of African Americans was high. However, whereas enrollment figures for other ethnicities increased or decreased slightly as they advanced in their study of Spanish, the figures for African Americans experienced a rapid downward movement. The reasons for this trend seemed to emanate from demotivation in Spanish language learning due to lack of a parental support system, role models, appropriate career counseling, and opportunities to achieve communicative competence stemming from difficulties in the classroom environment.

Exploring How Non-native Teachers Can Use Commonalties with Students to Teach the Target Language

Abstract: This article presents a qualitative study demonstrating how teachers who are non-native speakers (NNS) of the target language and who have learned the target language in a similar environment as their students can use their past learning experiences as pedagogical tools in their classes. An analysis of transcripts from classrooms with NNS and native speaking (NS) instructors determines that NNS instructors who share the same first language (L1) as their students have a keen ability to identify the learning processes of the students. Additionally, while NS teachers recognize difficult grammatical features in the target language with which students are likely to struggle, they are understandably unable to offer personal strategies for how they learned the target language. Furthermore, the results suggest that NNS teachers readily include themselves in the same speech and cultural community as their students, while NS instructors exclude the students when referencing themselves and other native speakers of the target language.

A Transpacific Voyage: The Representation of Asia in Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi's "El Periquillo Sarniento".

Abstract: This essay seeks to explore the representation of Asia in Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi's El Periquillo Sarniento (1816), which is often considered the first novel produced in Latin America. Although many scholars have examined the picaresque element as well as the nationalist aspect of the novel, the Asian presence in Fernandez de Lizardi's narrative has not received the attention that it deserves. My analysis focuses on the main character's voyage to the Philippines and the fictional Pacific island of Saucheofu, two places through which the author envisions an alternative model of society for colonial Mexico. The Philippines represents an ideal space in two ways: first, the protagonist begins the process of becoming an upright individual in Manila; and second, the discourse of antislavery can be articulated in an Asian country while it is prohibited in Mexico. Furthermore, Saucheofu symbolizes the idea of "utopia" to some extent, because of its exemplary system of productivity and the highly controlled mechanism of law and punishment. By studying the importance of these countries in the Far East, I propose a reading of El Periquillo Sarniento as the first transpacific novel in Latin American literature.

Portuguese Study in Higher Education in the United States

Abstract: This study reports the results of a national survey of Portuguese instructors that investigates enrollment growth in regions and institutions of higher education in the United States. It details the reasons why Portuguese enrollments have grown steadily since 1998, while providing data on the numbers of students enrolled in classes and the number of classes offered each year. It addresses the language background of students studying Portuguese and the nationality of Portuguese instructors. The report concludes that two key reasons for growth have been increased enrollments of Spanish speakers and Portuguese heritage speakers. Even though most regions of the United States have experienced growth, the health and well-being of Portuguese study is not the same at all institutions. While one might assume that doctoral institutions have the most faculty members, classes, and resources to maintain Portuguese study, this is not always the case. Furthermore, many colleges and universities now offer Portuguese but only at a minimum level of study.

The First Noun Principle and Ambitransitive Verbs

Abstract: This study explored native English speakers' interpretations of second-language Spanish sen- tences featuring an animate subject and an ambitransitive verb (e.g., Escuchan bien los ninos 'The children listen well'). First- (N537), third- (N539), and fifth-semester (N5 23) participants heard eight subject-verb (SV) and eight verb-subject (VS) sentences and selected from two English translations. Paired-samples t-tests indicated all levels scored significantly higher (p,.01) for SV than VS sentences. A one-way ANOVA also showed significant differences (p,.01) across levels for VS sentences, with fifth-semester learners significantly outperforming first- (p5.02) and third-semester (p,.01) learners. Findings reveal a tendency to interpret the first noun as an object in the VS sentences, contrary to the First Noun Principle.

Manuel González Prada and Rigoberta Menchú: Measuring Indigenismo through Indigenous Thought

Abstract: Much has been written about indianismo and indigenismo and their literary and social meaning, but rarely have these two criollo movements been positioned face to face with actual Indigenous expression. This article attempts a preliminary pass at just such an approach by comparing four indigenous themes established by Manuel Gonzalez Prada's essay "Nuestros indios" (1904) with analogous approximations in Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu y asi me nacio la conciencia (1985). Notwithstanding their different national contexts, manner of composition, and periods of composition, there is a surprising conformity between both texts' respective discursive positions on four topics: 1) the problem of the caporal , or overseer, who rises up over his own ethnic group; 2) the negative impact of alcohol among indigenous communities; 3) the conundrum of language and culture with respect to education; and 4) the turn toward violence as a response to internal colonialism. The consonance between Gonzalez Prada's Peruvian indigenismo and Rigoberta Menchu's Quiche perspective as dictated to anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos could be a coincidence, but it also suggests a common frame of reference for a criollo -indigenous dialogue in the context of persistent internal colonialism in two Latin American countries with large Amerindian populations.

On Nocilla and the Urbanization of Consciousness: Multiplicity and Interdisciplinarity in Agustín Fernández Mallo's Fragmented Trilogy

Abstract: This essay reappropriates the segmentary form of the three works of Agustin Fernandez Mallo’s Nocilla project ( Nocilla Dream [2006]; Nocilla Experience [2008]; Nocilla Lab [2009]) en route to an urban reading of its fragmentary structure. The project’s interdisciplinary push, overwhelming incorporation of both scientific and literary/cultural references, and method of collage evoke the shifting flow and complex nature of contemporary urban life. The ubiquity of references to urban communities within the text of Nocilla itself suggests connections to work by such figures as Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Louis Wirth, David Harvey, Raymond Williams, Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, and Jane Jacobs. Moreover, the present essay’s extratextual references, drifting method, and punctuated structure constitute a fitting scholarly tribute to the interdisciplinary approach that Fernandez Mallo has labeled “postpoetic.”

Calling for Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Spanglish and Its Linguistic Manifestations

Abstract: The aim of the present paper is to provide an overview of the so-called Spanglish phenomenon and its linguistic repertoires (code-switching utterances). We propose that it is necessary to link all different forms of analysis in order to verify hypotheses regarding the relationship among social, linguistic, and cognitive processes behind Spanglish. We argue that Spanglish consists of mixed utterances that result from the contact between two languages: Spanish and English. The characteristics of the contact situation separate Spanglish from pidgins and creoles. Zentella (1997) claims that those characteristics do not fit into a second language acquisition setting either, since the code-switching of Spanish-English bilinguals is different from the transfer-laden speech of second-language learners. However, there is debate regarding Spanglish being either a popular/colloquial Spanish variety within the United States (Otheguy 2009) or part of a more anthropological linguistic entity that corresponds to social formation (Zentella 2008). After years of research (Myers-Scotton 2002; Poplack 1980), the questions concerning the identification of gram- matical constraints governing code-switching remain unanswered. Methodologies are changing toward a more comprehensive multilayered approach aimed at a better understanding of how Spanglish functions. Interdisciplinary approaches are highlighted in the paper when identifying future venues of research.

A Concept-based Approach to the Subjunctive

Abstract: Linguistic research has shown that Spanish speakers mark clauses with the subjunctive when they consider the information value of those clauses to be low. Despite widespread agreement among linguists, however, the information-value approach to the subjunctive is largely ignored in textbooks and workbooks. This article explains how the information-value explanation works and suggests ways of incorporating this insight into classroom explanation.

Reading Las Meninas: An Ekphrastic Approach to Teaching Don Quijote

Abstract: Reading and teaching Don Quijote present multiple challenges to twenty-first century students and instructors who are culturally and historically distanced from the seventeenth century. With Las Meninas serving as a visual lexicon for cuing correlative themes and events in Don Quijote , the instructor, through an ekphrastic, interdisciplinary approach, can help students gain intellectual access to Cervantes's text by showing how one art form elucidates another. Furthermore, focusing on the fractured perspectives characteristic of both the painting and the novel reveals how artist and author point to an extra-pictorial reality beyond immediate sense perception, one that calls into question the accuracy of visual perception itself.

La publicidad española durante el franquismo (1939-1975). De la autarquía al consumo

Abstract: This article examines the role of advertising during the Franco regime and its influence on the evolution of the system towards a more tolerant position with modernity. Three types of sources were used. First, literature, a study of technical publications on advertising, published in the 40´s and 50´s, some of which are unprecedented works. This literature has been completed with research on consumption, published works by advertisers and agencies and with the review of the major campaigns in media. Secondly, archival sources in specific areas, particularly with regard to official support received for advertising in 1964, was also used. Finally, oral sources, specifically interviews with advertising professionals who re-launched the field between 1960 and 1975 have been extremely valuable. It is arguable that, during the 40´s, advertising condemned the autarchy that was sinking the country. In the 50´s it knew how to open the minds of the Spanish towards consumer products and lifestyles that were common in other markets. And from the 60´s to the end of the Franco regime, it made the public associate various products with values far from those embraced by the official Spain .

Intertextual Sexual Politics: Illness and Desire in Enrique Gómez Carrillo's Del amor, del dolor y del vicio and Aurora Cáceres's La rosa muerta

Abstract: This study explores the intertextuality between Aurora Caceres's La rosa muerta (1914) and the novel Del amor, del dolor y del vicio (1898) by her ex-husband, Enrique Gomez Carrillo. Caceres strategi- cally mentions Gomez Carrillo's novel in La rosa muerta to invite a reading of her work in dialogue with his. Both narratives follow the sexual awakening of an independently wealthy young widow, but exhibit important differences. Gomez Carrillo's sexually transgressive character closely follows the aesthetic and discursive norms of fin de siecle literature that pathologized female desire. His fictional women are a literary and aesthetic experiment in female decadentism, one that he ultimately puts aside by marrying the characters by the end of the novel. Caceres's narrative revises Gomez Carrillo's representations of female sexuality and modernista representations of women more broadly. I analyze Caceres's writing of the female body, illness, and desire to demonstrate the ways in which Caceres simultaneously critiques misogynistic discourses of the turn of the century and presents positive and realistic images of women's sexuality for future generations of women. La rosa muerta is a modernista novel that anticipates the emboldened attitude toward female eroticism and the provocative writing style of women writers of the avant-garde and the boom.

Grammar in the Real World: Enhancing Grammar Lessons with Pragmatics.

Abstract: Previous work in the field of interlanguage pragmatics suggests that learners of a second or foreign language benefit from metapragmatic instruction (e.g., Felix-Brasdefer 2008a; Kasper and Rose 2002; Koike and Pearson 2005). The most common approach taken in studies on instruction is to focus on a speech act and to develop a lesson that acts as a separate unit for the learners (or study participants). The current article presents a slightly different approach, suggesting that language educators enhance gram- mar lessons that are already part of the curriculum with instruction on pragmatics. Instead of developing additional units, this article shows how grammar lessons can be extended and enhanced using internet searches on Google and YouTube to find authentic materials in addition to authentic written texts. These lessons, in addition to providing metapragmatic instruction, also present opportunities to make cross- cultural comparisons between different Spanish-speaking countries and the United States.

Trazos proto-hipertextuales en la narrativa moderna latinoamericana: "La biblioteca de Babel"

Abstract: Por sus innovaciones y tecnicas narrativas, se puede leer parte de la produccion narrativa de Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) dentro de la literatura moderna latinoamericana como un intento de establecer antecedentes proto-hipertextuales. La afirmacion anterior no pretende sostener que fue la intencion de Borges escribir proto-hipertextos, sino que, por sus artificios literarios, varios de sus textos contienen elementos que vendran posteriormente a ser considerados caracteristicas intrinsecas de los hipertextos. "La biblioteca de Babel" (1941) presenta estructuras narrativas circulares, laberinticas e infinitas que se constituyen en aparatos de recuadro. Aunque el lector-usuario del texto participa activamente en el desenvolvimiento e interpretacion de la narrativa textual a nivel metaforico, padece de una pseudo-libertad textual debido a que no influye en la(s) direccion(es) que dicha narrativa puede tener. Por consiguiente, el lector-usuario proto-hipertextual en Borges no compite por control narrativo con el autor original del texto, sino por control semantico, ya que solo se le otorga mayor poder en el acto interpretativo a un nivel metaforico a traves de las estrategias narrativas laberinticas y circulares, y es esta competencia semantica la que permite leer estos cuentos borgeanos como proto-hipertextuales.

Contra el Estado Novo y el Nuevo Estado. El movimiento estudiantil ibérico antifascista

Abstract: In this article we aim to compare the evolution of the Portuguese and Spanish student movements during their dictatorships in sixties and seventies. We turn to primary sources (including those of the students) as well as specialized bibliography to elaborate a comparative history in which we establish the main phases and the peculiarities which characterized the bustle of the times within an international political and cultural context. Even though there are distinctive features within each country, we argue that the student movements of the Iberian Peninsula at that time share common features that went from an initial stage of «student autonomy» to a highly politicized phase in which the main concern lay outside the university, which was preceded by the dissolution of the unitarian movement due to the spread of extreme-left organizations in the university.

Privilege in Parentheses: A Reader's Renovated Place in Ricardo Piglia's "Plata quemada".

Abstract: As the newspaper continues to lose ground to a multitude of internet discourses, the role of intel- lectuals as a voice of opposition to hegemonic sources receives ever more intense scrutiny. In particular, the novel Plata quemada (1997) by the Argentine novelist Ricardo Piglia presents this intellectual dilemma and its newfound opportunities in fictional terms. Indeed, Piglia's text underlines a formidable critical agency in the consumers of this criminal discourse by way of the seemingly innocent parenthetical form. My essay proposes that these designated breathers in Piglia's novel succeed in preserving a key discursive site for readers to conceal themselves metaphorically as well as contest the book's shared journalistic "truths." Moreover, Plata quemada affirms that intellectuals are obliged to transform themselves into veritable urban chroniclers to fit within their increasingly debated role in Latin America's "lettered city." pon entering the discursive soup of virtual and print-based sources to analyze the current state of the Western newspaper-as-institution, "precarious" represents a term that repeats itself with alarming frequency. Besieged by the more instantaneous and individualized blogs and social websites, even the visual world of the network news reporter seems almost quaint in its temporally fixed status. This recent questioning of the viability of traditional news reporting is particularly stunning when considered in the context of Latin America's national formation. From Benedict Anderson citing the newspaper as the principal means of consolidating a nineteenth-century "imagined community" among these countries' readers to Angel Rama's positing the figure of the periodista as a prime generator of written power and control, Latin American writers of news were perceived as integral forces of cohe- sion for their nations' discursive fabric. That is, these paper intellectuals helped to generate the words on which their societies and institutions could be planned and constructed. Throughout Ricardo Piglia's novel Plata quemada (1998), however, this theoretical elaboration of truly independent periodical discourse moving from "enlightened" members of the intelligentsia to their grateful public no longer represents a viable model for tracing the current multidirectional flows of news and information. Nevertheless, the image of Latin America's intellectuals as selfless servants of the nation obscures the often-forgotten role of their readers in this daily discursive ritual. If the reporter is responsible for composing an article or, with the development of television, transmitting a news story, one of the public's unspoken duties is to absorb these reports, comfortable with the assumption that lettered professionals did indeed "get the story right." In the case of Piglia's Plata quemada, this simplistic one-way relationship between journalistic intellectual and audi- ence receives a frontal attack of subjectivity from the direction of its reading public. It is in the form of explanations afforded by parentheticals that this questioning of absolute intellectual supremacy of the news-diffusing institutions in Plata quemada gains its greatest traction.

Caballeros, ladrones, mujeres, magia y poder en Carlos Maynes y Enrique Fi de Oliva

Abstract: Este articulo estudia la relacion entre magia y robo en Carlos Maynes y Enrique Fi de Oliva, dos novelas de la Edad Media castellana que se publicaron en el reinado de Isabel I. La conexion entre magia y robo es muy antigua; recuerdese el caso de Ali Baba y los cuarenta ladrones. Esta conexion puede verse como la materializacion de una metafora. Los ladrones que obtienen posesiones mediante encantamientos, representan la idea de que robar es adquirir bienes como por arte de magia. En estas narraciones, los ladrones no son siempre malos. Al contrario, hay muchos ladrones buenos, como es el caso de Robin Hood o de los propios caballeros andantes. Tomando las obras de Geraldine Heng y Jared Diamond como fuentes de inspiracion, este articulo sugiere que el "imperio de magia" propuesto en Carlos Maynes y Enrique Fi de Oliva refleja los ideales de la Reina Catolica, ya que es una representacion folclorica de una "cleptocracia benigna" en la que ocupan un papel muy importante las mujeres, principales victimas de la "cleptocracia maligna" imperante al comienzo de la obra, asi como principales agentes de cambio a un modelo politico mas equilibrado y seguro.

Modelos de identidad femenina en la España de posguerra: El teatro de Mercedes Ballesteros

Abstract: Mercedes Ballesteros es una de las principales representantes en Espana de la generacion de autoras teatrales de posguerra. el analisis de los roles de genero en su produccion dramatica permite comprobar como incluso en aquellas sociedades profundamente conservadoras, como la franquista, a traves del arte y especialmente a traves del teatro -por su proximidad a la realidad cotidiana y su capacidad para llegar a un publico amplio-, se pueden reflejar modelos y fenomenos heterodoxos que se alejan del prototipo legitimado por el poder. El presente ensayo estudia, por ello, como se plasman en las obras de teatro de Mercedes Ballesteros, publicadas y estrenadas desde comienzo de la decada de los cuarenta hasta mediados de los sesenta, los roles de genero y como, a pesar de la fuerte ideologia androcentrica dominante, se pueden identificar en ellas determinados modelos de mujer que resultan subversivos y que se alejan, en algun grado, del ideal hegemonico del "angel del hogar".

A Modular Approach to Spanish for Heritage Language Learners Courses

Abstract: The current debate in second language acquisition and heritage language learning is no longer about whether communicative language teaching should include a focus on form, but rather how and when this is most effective The proposals for Spanish for heritage language learners (HLLs) courses show a marked preference for an integrated approach to syllabus design, such as content-based and community-based courses In this article, I explore on theoretical grounds the suitability of Ellis's () modular approach to syllabus design in developing Spanish for HLLs syllabi as an alternative to the integrated syllabus I explain how some of the limitations of the integrated syllabus are even greater in Spanish for HLLs courses I also provide a rationale for the implementation of a modular approach, based on two fundamental properties: 1) a place for isolated form focused instruction (FFI) and 2) the specific timing in which this isolated FFI is introduced I argue here that the type of target features that need to be (re)acquired by HLLs, as well as the characteristics of the HLLs, make the presence of a component for isolated FFI particularly beneficial for Spanish for HLLs courses

Of Booms and Gold Bricks: The First Crisis in Spanish Enrollments.

Abstract: The first two decades of the twentieth century witnessed a sharp increase in Spanish enroll - ments at both the secondary and post-secondary level of instruction. This first "Spanish Boom" created opportunities for professional growth; yet, its very suddenness also highlighted numerous structural and institutional obstacles that hindered a coherent strategy for the greater integration of Spanish into academia. This article explores the historical, political, and social factors that created the boom, as well as the ill-reflected professional responses that accounted for the eventual bust. It asks readers to reinstate the past as an optic through which to examine current trends and "crises."

Las reformas carolinas y los comerciantes extranjeros en España: actitudes y respuestas de las «naciones» a la ofensiva regalista, 1759-1793

Abstract: This paper examines the responses of foreign merchant communities to the Caroline reforms carried out in Spain between 1759 and 1793. In 1700, the so called naciones (foreign communities in Spain) inherited strong corporate privileges from the Spanish Habsburg kings. However, their position progressively deteriorated, especially after the accession of Charles III in 1759. Against the backdrop of dramatic cuts in their privileges, the naciones adapted themselves to the new circumstances in different ways: a greater flexibility on the part of the Flemish and Irish communities could explain the better adaptation of these groups, whereas the French community decided, as early on as 1700, to adopt a strong institutional defence of their privileges. This eventually proved to be their downfall, as evidenced by their mass expulsion from Spain in 1793. Traditionally this expulsion was linked to the shock caused by the French Revolution in Spain. However, there had been a political line drawn between Caroline reformers and Spanish policymakers on the need to clarify the privileges of all foreign merchants in Spain dating back to 1759. The reforms responded to the traditional pressure from the peripheral cities and their concerns regarding foreign competition. However, as this paper suggests, these reforms also surpassed the limits of commercial activity by becoming a key element in the transformation of the old political framework of relations between the Spanish king and the naciones . This model definitively went into crisis giving way to a new concept of «the foreigner» as an individual.