Historia is a word with several layers of meaning: it can translate as history, as in La historia de los Estados Unidos, and it also means story - typically a non-literary story that someone tells rather than reads. Often a historia is at least partially based in fact, as opposed to a cuento, which is classified as fiction. When a person tells the story of an experience from their lives, it is a historia - even if there is some exaggeration involved!

This intermediate Spanish course focuses on using historias to foster the synthesis and integration of grammar you have learned in previous courses with new content: you will review and practice grammar, applying it to the study of literature (in the form of legends and folktales) and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world. As you read the legends, you will look for examples of the grammar as it is used in the stories and you will practice using it in context to talk about them. You will also see and hear contextualized examples of grammar in cortometrajes and film clips, songs and other cultural products, and you will practice the grammar by discussing them in class.

This course will focus on all four of the basic language skills in a number of ways. You will practice reading in Spanish with the legends and stories and accompanying materials. You will practice listening with the films and songs, but most importantly by listening to your instructor every day in class. The course includes a writing component: you will write compositions as well as a script for a final film project. Some of the compositions are written individually while others take the form of scripts or screenplays: you will practice writing dialogue in order to turn the prose of the stories into a more conversational format. You will then practice speaking by making recordings and films of your compositions, in addition to the day-to-day speaking you will do in class.

This digital textbook incorporates some special features designed to enhance your language-learning experience. For example, you can hover your cursor over vocabulary words to reveal a definition or translation if you need it. Some grammar structures are also linked to an explanation when they appear in the text, so that you may click it if you need assistance interpreting that sentence. Finally, because students at the intermediate level typically struggle with larger numbers, particularly dates, whenever a number 100or greater appears in the text it is hoverable. We encourage you to attempt to say the number in Spanish on your own, then hover to check your answer, so that you can become more comfortable with dates and large numbers in Spanish.

You will probably find that Spanish 202 is more challenging than your previous Spanish courses and may require you to adjust your approach to studying. For example, in a typical 100-level Spanish course each chapter of the textbook will have a comprehensive vocabulary list and the content will be mostly limited to known vocabulary. As you advance in proficiency, vocabulary learning becomes less and less dependent on prepared lists and more and more incidental and opportunistic. There will be a vocabulary list for each unit in this course, but you will also encounter a great deal of new vocabulary beyond what is included in the lists. You should practice growing your vocabulary organically by using context to determine word meaning, looking for cognates and keeping track of new vocabulary using the method (flashcards, notebook, etc.) that works best for you.

Another key difference you may notice in Spanish 202 is the constant recycling of grammar topics, especially the preterite/imperfect contrast and the various forms of the subjunctive. Often in lower-level language courses it may seem like you study and practice a grammar topic and then leave it behind, moving on to the next one, with comparatively little sense of the cumulative nature of language learning. In the stories you will read in Spanish 202, all the grammatical forms appear in context in the stories from the very beginning. At first it may be challenging for you to recognize and parse them, but over time you will learn how to draw on context and understand how they relate to the story being told. At the intermediate level of proficiency, the two most important grammatical challenges to master are the preterite/imperfect contrast and the use of the subjunctive, so these topics are introduced early in the semester and frequently revisited and practiced in subsequent units.