College of Arts & Sciences
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Learning Goals

I. Spanish Major: Literature

  1. Students are familiar with the literature and
    culture of the entire Hispanic world. This is achieved in the classroom and
    experientially during their study abroad.
  2. Students read and analyze the canonical texts of
    Spain and Latin America as well as other representative texts and cultural
    expressions.
  3. Students know the different genres produced in all
    periods of the Spanish-speaking world.
  4. Students are familiar and understand the fundamental
    and leading literary and cultural theories, and a variety of scholarly
    approaches.

Spanish Major Assessment: Literature

  1. Students take a set number of courses according to a distribution to ensure that they have been exposed to different periods, regions, genres, and other cultural manifestations. (Course grid for majors). A grade of B+ or above in these courses is expected.
  2. Making extensive use of the technology in Blackboard:
    • Students prepare a dossier with all their papers, reflections, or any other form of work produced throughout their career at Georgetown or while studying abroad. The increasing level of difficulty and the improvement in quality should be reflected throughout time.
    • Students construct a glossary of the theoretical concepts and literary terms that would document their exposure to the fundamental as well as the cutting edge literary and cultural theories. The faculty will evaluate the dossier at the end of the majors’ junior year to give students the opportunity to improve or complete what might be missing.
  3. Exit survey – A self-evaluation about the achievement of the goals set for the major.

II. Spanish Major: Linguistics

  1. Students can identify the issues, assumptions,
    innovations, and tools of linguistic analysis and apply them to new Spanish
    data.
  2. Students discuss the relevance of linguistics to
    everyday life, from language teaching to judicial procedures, computational problems,
    and policy.
  3. Students can identify common patterns and
    differences among Spanish speaking communities in the US, Latin America, and
    Spain.
  4. Students understand the external and internal
    conditions that have shaped the different varieties of Spanish and their
    evolution from Vulgar Latin. At the same time they are able to understand and
    explain the main differences between Spanish, English and other Romance
    languages in search for language universals and differences.
  5. Students understand the relationship between
    cognitive development and cognition and the individual’s ability to speak two
    languages, as well as the sociolinguistic conditions for societal bilingualism
    to exist.
  6. Critical thinking: students can critically read
    primary and secondary sources carefully and deliberately before determining
    both the validity of the argument and of the evidence on which it is based.
  7. Research Methods: as a follow up to the previous
    point (i.e., critically review the literature in the area), students show
    ability to generate a hypothesis and design an ethnographic, experimental or
    any data-based study to test said hypothesis. For students writing an Honors
    Thesis, students are able to go beyond the design and complete the study.
  8. Language Skills: students’ academic Spanish, both
    oral and written, shows descriptive and argumentative abilities and command of
    technical vocabulary.

Spanish Major Assessment: Linguistics

Integrated Writing Statement

Writing is an integral part of each of the three majors offered by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese(Spanish, Portuguese, and Spanish and Portuguese Studies)and central to all levels of study in our course offerings. Please read the full Integrated Writing Statement here.