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COURSE DESCRIPTION

The growing importance of culture as part of the discourse in so many disciplines underscores the importance of this course. The quest for Caribbean integration depends, in part, on a proper understanding of the cultural trajectories that result from our shared historical past. The socio-cultural understanding of our historical past will help to cement our Caribbean identity. This course is integral to an understanding of Caribbean society, people and culture.

The course seeks to equip students with an in-depth understanding of core aspects of Caribbean culture. They will be exposed to the discourses related to: Caribbean identity, Rastafari, Caribbean family and kinship, gender in the Caribbean, Caribbean religions and Caribbean aesthetics. The format of the course provides students with the opportunity to appreciate the diversity of Caribbean culture and use this to interpret other cultures. Students will be required to visit a cultural site and prepare a field trip report as part of the assessment of the course.

The course is intended to deepen students’ awareness of the importance of ethics in their day to day work as human service professionals; to develop their skills in ethical decision-making and to assist them in internalizing norms of professional conduct appropriate to their profession and field of service. The course will also be a vehicle for challenging students’ professional commitment to the creation of effective and just policies for the people of the Caribbean.

Aim: The aim of this course is to provide the student with additional opportunities to develop their basic language skills. During the course, the student will engage in a wide range of activities designed to:

a. Continue the development of the necessary skills to understand inquires/conversations/written extracts based on personal experiences.

b. Strengthen the necessary skills to express him/herself orally and in writing on these experiences.

c. Develop mastery of the essential elements of the Spanish language system.

Functional objectives:

• Understand inquires/conversations based on personal information, personal interests and other topics linked to the student’s day-to-day activities.
• Read and understand flyers, brochures and texts with simple linguistic structures based on topics familiar to the student.
• Respond to questions based on personal information, interests and the student’s daily routine; function in situations students might meet in his/her day-to-day activities e.g. eating out, buying food, etc.
• Write short notes, messages, e-mails based on topics linked to student’s day-to-day activities.
• Discuss a variety of events using the present, future and past tenses.

This course is designed for the student to learn how to communicate with Spanish-speaking companies, institutions, customers and colleagues. It is aimed at facilitating the acquisition of the necessary linguistic skills and intercultural competences to manage administrative and commercial duties in Spanish in the field of business within Latin America and the Caribbean. The level of this course is C Proficient User according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (See Handbook Department of Modern Languages and Literatures 23). Particular consideration will be given to the diverse types of business correspondence, technical lexicon and grammar concepts to effectively perform in the Latin American business environment. Reading assignments and translation exercises (English into Spanish) will also be an integral part of this course. Classroom analysis and discussion will be essential for a deeper understanding of each of the topics and linguistics issues. For this reason, students are expected to regularly attend class with all assignments already solved. Teaching will be conducted in Spanish.