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Journal ArticleDOI

The Evolution of Future Spanish Graduate Programs to Meet Diverse Student Needs

Barbara A Lafford
- 01 Jan 2018 - 
- Vol. 100, Iss: 5, pp 195-201
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TLDR
The authors envisions the evolution of Spanish graduate programs that incorporate interdisciplinary approaches and professional training into their curriculum to meet diverse graduate student needs (i.e., preparing them for careers inside/outside of academe, training them to start professional languages programs, allowing heritage learners of Spanish to leverage their linguistic/cultural expertise, and providing opportunities for them to forge community partnerships to improve the quality of life of the people they will serve).
Abstract
As the 2007 report from the Modern Language Association attested, foreign language departments must undergo radical structural changes in order to meet student needs in a changed world. The implications of this report (e.g., to broaden the curriculum beyond the study of literature, linguistics, and culture to include courses with other disciplinary content [history, economics, business, medicine]) have been implemented by some university language programs at the undergraduate level (e.g., Byrnes, Maxim, and Norris 2010) but mostly have been ignored by graduate programs. The effects of the dearth of foreign language graduate programs encouraging graduate students to engage in interdisciplinary research and teaching with faculty and students in other departments is seen in the literature on Languages for Specific Purposes in the United States (Lafford 2012), briefly reviewed here. This essay envisions the evolution of Spanish graduate programs that incorporate interdisciplinary approaches and professional training into their curriculum to meet diverse graduate student needs (i.e., preparing them for careers inside/outside of academe, training them to start professional languages programs, allowing heritage learners of Spanish to leverage their linguistic/cultural expertise, and providing opportunities for them to forge community partnerships to improve the quality of life of the people they will serve).

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Citations
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The state of ESP teaching and learning in Western European education after Bologna

TL;DR: The authors provided a brief and comprehensive historical review of ESP and of the policies leading up to the Bologna implementation, and presented the results from a survey of current trends in ESP course development and teaching methodologies.
Journal ArticleDOI

Celebrating 100 Years of Hispania: Overview and Response

Frank Nuessel
- 01 Jan 2018 - 
TL;DR: In 2018, the 100th anniversary of the publication of the journal Hispania was celebrated at the Modern Language Association (MLA) session on Visionary Essays: The Future of Spanish and Portuguese (Hispania 2017).
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

The Relationship of Lexical Richness to the Quality of ESL Learners’ Oral Narratives

TL;DR: This paper examined the relationship of lexical richness to the quality of English as a second language learners' oral narratives, using 25 different metrics proposed in the language acquisition literature, including lexical density, sophistication, and variation.
Book

Brave New Digital Classroom: Technology and Foreign Language Learning

TL;DR: This first of its kind to offer a comprehensive summary of technologies developed to assist language learning, with an emphasis on foreign language classrooms aims to address all prevalent issues of instructional technology use and provides an overview of the most successful technologies used in language classrooms.
Journal ArticleDOI

Evolution of Languages for Specific Purposes Programs in the United States: 1990-2011.

TL;DR: A survey of LSP offerings in U.S. higher education conducted during 2011 as mentioned in this paper showed that while the overall offerings have remained relatively stable at 62%, the sophistication and variety of offerings have become deeper and more focused in response to broader needs.

The state of ESP teaching and learning in Western European education after Bologna

TL;DR: The authors provided a brief and comprehensive historical review of ESP and of the policies leading up to the Bologna implementation, and presented the results from a survey of current trends in ESP course development and teaching methodologies.
Journal ArticleDOI

Languages for Specific Purposes in the United States in a Global Context: Commentary on Grosse and Voght (1991) Revisited

TL;DR: The authors provide a thematic overview of the major issues raised by Grosse and Voght (1991), 'The Evolution of Languages for Specific Purposes in the United States', and the contributions in this Focus Issue that address those issues from a 2011 perspective.
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