Pedagogy: Community Colleges

The Intermediate Year: ¿A dónde vamos?

Queensborough Community College

The traditional offerings in Intermediate Spanish usually include a review of the grammar on the first level and cultural readings on the second. The Intermediate year is a period of gestation in which the material taught in the first year of college Spanish or in three years of the language in high school is assimilated. In general, this is the placement procedure at both the Senior and Community Colleges of the City University of New York. A review of the course offerings prepared by the CUNY Council of Foreign Language Study in 1985 listing the textbooks used would indicate that this is indeed the common practice, although some variation does exist⁷⁸.

Teaching intermediate courses presents a plethora of problems unique to this level. The level seems to both teacher and students like a never ending plateau between the continuous presentation of new material that takes place on the elementary level, and the rapid perfection of skills that takes place on the advanced. But beyond the inherent difficulties, we find at Queensborough that the problem can be categorized as follows:

l. The uneven preparation of the students, native as well as non-native,

2. The multiplicity of aims as we attempt to teach our students to read, write, and speak the language, and

3. The diversity of opinion as to what constitutes the culture to be taught.

For the benefit of readers outside of New York City, I should explain that Queensborough Community College is located in Bayside, which is in the northeastern part of the Borough of Queens. It is adjacent to Nassau County in Long Island. Homes in the area sell for about $200,000, but few of our students come from wealthy families. High schools from all over Queens and even other boroughs send their graduates to us. There is a high percentage of first generation Americans from Hispanic, Asian, Haitian, Italian, Greek, Russian, and Arabic backgrounds along with African, Irish, and Jewish Americans. The high school averages of entering freshmen range from 70% to 85% with the highest concentration in the 75 to 80 percentile. Generally, we offer three or four sections of Inter mediate Spanish I, and two or three of Inter mediate II. We place incoming students with three or four years of Spanish in Intermediate I, unless they are native speakers with qualifications to go on to more advanced courses. Some students who have taken elementary Spanish at Queensborough also take intermediate courses, either to meet the graduation requirements at Q. C. C. or at the senior college (usually Queens College) to which they transfer, or because they may be interested in majoring or minoring in the language.

As can be seen, we have a considerable mix of students. Many of the incoming students have never learned the passive voice or the subjunctive in high school. Few of the native speakers have any idea where to place the accent mark; they omit the «h» when using any part of the verb «haber», and by ultra-correction write it in where it is not needed; also, they confuse «b's» with «v's», «c's» and «z's» with «s's.» Placing modesty aside, it is usually the student who has studied elementary Spanish at Queensborough who is best prepared to undertake the work of Intermediate Spanish I.

The term «native speaker» covers a wide range of abilities. Some of our entering students have completed the «bachillerato» or almost done so in their country. These go directly into our literature courses, or perhaps, into our course in Composition and Orthography for Native Speakers. Those that enter the Intermediate Level have studied Spanish in New York City high schools. Hispanics born in the United States or who came here at an early age, and have never had any formal training in the language are placed in Elementary Spanish I, where they have the best chance of learning to write the language correctly.

The fact that they are Community College students bears no reflection on their ability, although the poorer ones do suffer from a lack of study skills never having acquired them in high school. By this, I do not mean to blame their previous teachers; many of these students were too immature to benefit from them. The negative influences in our society that denigrate the importance of learning, the temptations of the streets, and the problems within the home are largely to account for poor performance. Now, older and wiser, many strive very hard, but encounter other problems-responsibilities that oblige them to work too many hours while attending school, or difficulties arising from relationships that interfere with their studies. Still, there are many from the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder that have had a lot of exposure to Spanish. One of the best students I ever had was a thirty year old youth worker who told me he had learned his Spanish in jail. A number of my ex-students both native and non-native have become teachers of Spanish.

At Queensborough, being an inner-city school, very few students fit the profile de scribed in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (27). Spanish is the second language of the city; there are over two million Hispanics living in New York; hence, the pronunciation of the language does not present difficulties for most students. Almost all have had some contact with the language, and, except for the double «rr», there are no sounds that do not exist in English. In fact, some characteristics of typical New York speech patterns, such as dentalized «d's» and «t's», and the pronunciation of the «s» with the closing of the back teeth, are precisely what are called for in Spanish.

Now that we understand the nature of our student body, the question arises as to what to teach on the intermediate level. While the basic grammar may have been covered in elementary courses, this, of course, does not mean that it has been learned. Reinforcement is needed for it to be internalized by the student. Current FL methodology stresses the importance of oral communication, but in order to achieve this, we must often dispense with the stress on grammatical exactitude. No one can speak freely if his or her mistakes are constantly being corrected. We can demand more precision in written composition, but in order to effectively perfect this skill, the teacher should correct the writing in the presence of the student so that he or she may understand the mistakes made and how to avoid them. This is an ideal. How does one do that with thirty students in the class, and no conference hour included in the class schedule? Often when the teacher asks the student to come in at the teacher's office hour, the student has another class or has to go to work.

The problem is further complicated by the fact that we are trying to teach grammar, composition, and conversation all at the same time. While it is true that each of these aspects of learning a foreign language has an impact upon the other, as with any subject or lesson, the aim must be clear for there to be any hope of achieving it. Personally, I have been most successful in achieving all three goals when teaching Intermediate Level Conversation courses, because, while the emphasis was on trying to get the student to express him or herself orally, written composition was an essential part of the student's preparation. As I mentioned in the 3rd edition of my text, Temas y diálogos,

I was fortunate in seldom having more than fifteen students in my class; hence, it was not too much of a chore to correct their compositions. One technique I used to cut down the number of compositions I would have to take home, and also to give students the individual attention they needed, was to have the students

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rewrite their compositions, usually no longer than a paragraph or two, in class. While this was going on, I would go around the room correcting their work. The act of rewriting, especially if done from memory, made the words almost indelible in the students' minds. When called upon to speak, their words would flow. I almost never allowed them to look at what they had written, still they had little problem answering questions put to them by me or other students.

Using this technique, the students learned to write fairly correctly and to express them selves orally, most of them, with ease. They learned their grammar as well, but it was almost incidental to the course. My text does contain a review of the major points, but after half the semester, we no longer felt the need to do the grammatical exercises. Specific points were referred to when an individual student needed them to be refreshed. Examinations were oral; students had to speak ex temporaneously and answer questions. I doubt I would have been as successful had I had thirty students in the class, but I can look back with a certain sense of satisfaction at having achieved my aim.

The next question we must consider, especially on the Intermediate II level is course content. Most Conversation texts on the Intermediate Level do present real life situations and topics that will hopefully stimulate student interest. I am happy to see that the travel oriented books of a generation ago have, by and large, given way to the more immediate interests and experiences of the student. Spanish, unlike most other foreign languages, is not really a «foreign» language in this country. To students living in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and other urban centers and areas such as the Southwest, no frontiers have to be crossed to come into contact with the Spanish-speaking world. One does not need to learn how to get through customs or reserve a hotel room. Most often the language is at one's fingertips with a turn of the dial on the radio or television set. Students should be encouraged to avail themselves of these excellent opportunities to put into practice what is learned in the classroom.

There are many excellent textbooks that address themselves to the specific needs of different professions, such as those dealing with Medical Spanish, Commercial Spanish, Spanish for Social Workers, Police Officers, and the like, but not many schools offer courses in these areas. For one thing, they do not meet the Liberal Arts component of courses as mandated by the New York State Board of Regents, into which most other language courses fall. The Liberal Arts student, who in most cases does have a foreign language requirement for graduation, would seldom elect to take such a course.

Changes in the New York State foreign language requirements will mean that more entering freshmen will have had three years of foreign language study in high school. They will be entering our intermediate level courses. What shall we teach them that will have a lasting impact upon their lives? How shall we keep their interest alive? In order to justify our existence and the foreign language requirement, we will have to be more effective in giving them some ability to use the language. I have not yet mentioned reading ability, yet this passive knowledge is the easiest to acquire, and the one that will remain longest with the graduate. It would not be a disservice to the student if we were to concentrate more on this skill. But we must remember that not all are interested in literature or have any appreciation of it. There are other reading materials in a foreign language besides short stories, novels, and poems. With our enthusiasm for the communicative approach in language methodology, we may be overlooking a very vital area of foreign language teaching.

This brings us to the third problem I had mentioned at the beginning of this article, the diversity of opinion as to what constitutes the culture to be taught. The ACTFL Guidelines seem to stress social competence. For example, they indicate that an advanced student «shows comprehension of common rules of etiquette, such as use of "tú" and "usted" and titles of respect, the importance of dressing according to the occasion in a more formal society, taboos, etc.» (35).I would be the last one to downplay the importance of such things, but is that all there is? I find no mention of knowledge of the history, art, music, literature, or even the basic geography of the Hispanic world. As it is, history and geography have been watered down in the lower schools. I am no longer dismayed at the students' ignorance of such things. It is not entirely their fault. Yet I feel that they have been cheated when so many are not quite sure that Columbus discovered America in 1492. In a recent

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poll I took of my students, 75% did not know that Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina. All the students in my Intermediate Level II class believed that agrarian reform dealt with a better method of farming. We, in our class, have an opportunity, perhaps even an obligation to fill in the gaps in what was once the basic education of every elementary school child. What will we have accomplished if we turn out students who have had three years of high school Spanish and perhaps a year on the Intermediate level if, at best, they can speak some Spanish, politely, of course, and even recite a poem, but don't know where Spanish is spoken or how and when it got there. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 reads as follows in Article 26 relating to education:

I believe most FL teachers subscribe to this ideal, and that our classes provide an excellent forum for the realization of it. As citizens of the United States whose foreign policy is so deeply involved in Latin-American politics, it is of extreme importance that we explain the problems and attitudes prevalent in the area to the next generation in order that the mistakes made in the past may be avoided. They, as future citizens of an ever shrinking world, should have sufficient knowledge of history and geography to take their place in it. We may not be able to teach them all they will need, but we can certainly provide them with some essential information about the Hispanic world. It is my opinion that this is, to some extent, our mission.

ACTFL Provisional Proficiency Guidelines. (Workshop begun in 1982 under a grant provided by the U. S. Department of Education.)

Altabé, David F. Temas y diálogos. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980.

Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos. Proclamada por la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas el 10 de diciembre de 1948. Artículo 26, Sec.2.

Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 73, Number 4, December 1990