Language Program
Programmatic Objectives
The Language Program of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at The University of Texas-Austin focuses on the development of three types of competencies: 1. Linguistic competence: knowledge of Spanish/Portuguese phonetics/phonology, lexicon, syntax, discourse, etc. 2. Communication competence: communicative abilities in Spanish/Portuguese such as pragmatic uses of language, cultural background and perspectives. 3. Conceptual competence: critical-thinking abilities developed through the analysis of language as a conceptual, symbolic system.
Teaching and Learning Methodologies
Learner-based inductive learning
- Our program leads students through a "guided inductive approach" (discovery approach) that presents learners with selected samples of language that learners must analyze in order to discover patterns of language use and to develop hypotheses (rules of thumb) about the target language.
- Pedagogical activities used by our instructors are based on a student-centered approach to language learning, in which learners are asked to figure out the "rules" of the language. Thus, activities lead students to cyclically test, modify, and develop hypotheses about both the linguistic structure and the communicative functions of Spanish-Portuguese.
- Making mistakes in both spoken and written performance is a normal sign of development. Thus, students are asked to track their development through an analysis of patterns of errors throughout time.
- Language use is affected by social factors such as speakers (e.g., age, socio-economic class, gender), communication purpose (e.g., arguing, chatting), setting (e.g., school, home), mode of communication (e.g., written, oral, email), etc.
- Our program asks learners to analyze uses of the target language according to socio-cultural phenomena. This approach leads students to communicate in sociolinguistically appropriate ways with speakers of the target language.
- Our program also leads learners to develop knowledge about dialectal differences thus it provides learners with knowledge not typically available to native speakers.
- Finally, our program focuses students on the development of both understanding the target language culture, and adapting, expanding, and modifying one's own frame of cultural reference (i.e., understanding oneself).