SPANISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE PROGRAM
The Spanish as a Second Language Program offers intensive lower division courses all year round with complete immersion in Argentine life and culture. A team of qualified native Spanish faculty with expertise in applied linguistics teaches language courses using the communicative approach methodology. The course books are written by the professors themselves and published by Belgrano University Press.
Courses meet Monday through Thursday for 3 or 5 hours and the first and last Friday of each session, they take 120 academic hours to complete. Students are allocated to different levels on the basis of a written online placement test that will take priority over past courses. Course capacity is limited to 15 students and a minimum of students is required for each course.
The Spanish sessions can be combined with a 60-hour Community Based course. Our menu of options includes working in the community, health, science & technology, education, ecology & environment. The professional experience will be academically directed and supervised by our Spanish faculty.
SERVICE LEARNING
This 60-hour Community-based course can last 4, 6, or 12 weeks, depending on the Spanish session you combine it with, or 15 weeks within the semester (see Academic Calendar). It combines coursework with a volunteering project. Our menu of options includes working in the community, health, science & technology, education, ecology & environment.
The professional experience will be academically directed and supervised by our faculty. In order to guarantee the success of the experience, students will work with the guidance of both a tutor (faculty) and mentor (in the community service site). They will meet the faculty once a week to discuss both the assignments and the reading materials. This combination will bring students a meaningful insight of the reality of the daily life of porteños culture, while also enabling increased intercultural understanding, and Spanish acquisition. As both course and practice are conducted in Spanish, an intermediate level of Spanish is required.
SUMMER PEAL
SUMMER PEAL is a boreal summer/ austral winter five-week term (Late June – Late July) consisting of two upper division survey courses in Latin American Cultural Studies taught in Spanish.
Courses meet four times per week for 150 minutes each class and take a total of 60 hours to complete. A minimum of ten students is required to open the program.
For students that require a Spanish Language course, Summer PEAL can be combined with our intensive four-week language program (Late May – Late June). This combination lasts nine weeks and does not require a student visa.
SUMMER PALAS
SUMMER PALAS is a boreal summer/ austral winter five-week term (Late June – Late July) consisting of two upper division survey courses in business taught in English, both at the 300 level. Courses meet four times per week for 150 minutes each class and take a total of 60 hours to complete. A minimum of ten students is required to open the program.
MEDICAL SPANISH
Universidad de Belgrano and Fleni offer a five-week boreal summer/ austral winter Medical Spanish Immersion (Late June – Late July). This is a unique opportunity for students to experience medical clinics at Fleni, a nonprofit organization devoted to upgrading people’s health and to provide medical and hospital services of the highest quality. This experience will not only enhance students’ CV, but also give them an advantage when applying for Medical School.
This program is aimed primarily at students interested in improving their medical Spanish while shadowing at Fleni. Intensive practice will be provided in two ways: through clinical rotation at Fleni in the mornings and Spanish classes at Universidad de Belgrano in the afternoons. All students must take a written and oral Spanish placement test online to determine if they are eligible for this program. An upper intermediate level is required. A minimum of eight students is required to open the program.
THE SPANISH MEDIA WORKSHOP
This 2-week Spanish Media 60-hour workshop combines in-class instruction with a hands-on production workshop. It is ideal for anyone wanting to experience Buenos Aires’ urban culture in depth and create a visual travel journal. Students who have taken semester or intensive courses may wish to add this workshop in order to extend their stay and go for a fun experiential learning project with an academic purpose. Students will gain first-hand experience of culture related with immigration and national identity; race, class, gender, and economic inequality; politics, graffiti art and popular culture; urban and environmental planning.
The workshop will use the urban experience to enhance students’ awareness, responsiveness and communication skills by grounding formal education in “real-world” experiences. Using the language of social media, mainly film, photography and podcast, as a lens to explore and interpret various aspects of experience in Buenos Aires, this workshop will guide students through a series of short daily assignments that they will build into a dossier of different visual and audio exercises. The routine of posting a short paragraph every day in response to a prompt will help students become more fluent in Spanish and sharper observers. Real engagement with the environment entails noticing things that are not pretty but will definitely influence our perception of the city. Students will cooperate with classmates in making a creative film about Buenos Aires and giving peer feedback on other students’ projects. The 10-minute documentary will be shot and edited with the students’ own smartphones or tablets. At the end of the course, students will screen their work and engage in critiques and discussion with their classmates and instructor.
The course requires the active participation of all students. Significant production and post-production hours outside of class time are necessary, and students are expected to walk around the city and interview people in order to complete the assignments. The purpose of this workshop is to use the “innocent” eye of students to unveil lesser-known features of Buenos Aires through their own lived experiences and those of the local urban dwellers. Putting these experiences into Spanish will help students appreciate cities from a new perspective, promoting cultural understanding during these key formative years.
