Spanish (B.A.)

Program Overview

The Spanish Major encompasses a wide variety of courses to study the language itself, as well as the history, literature, culture, and civilization of the Spanish-speaking peoples. Introductory level courses focus on grammar, phonetics, conversation, composition and culture and are taught with an emphasis on oral proficiency. Intermediate and advanced courses are taught in Spanish.

Program Learning Outcomes

Graduates from Messiah’s Spanish program can:

1. Identify relevant historical (political, religious and economic) events in the geographical areas in which the target language is spoken.

2. Describe cultural trends for the geographical areas in which the target language is spoken.

3. Recognize syntactic phonetic structures in the target language.

4. Define important literary periods and genres.

5. Engage in purposeful reading and textual interpretation of literary and informational texts in the target language.

6. Find, assess and utilize secondary sources.

7. Engage in literary analysis and critical interpretation of texts in the target language.

8. Document according to MLA standards.

9. Write thesis driven essays about topics pertaining to language, literature, linguistics and culture.

10. Communicate in spoken form with native speakers of the target language.

11. Communicate in written form with native speakers of the target language.

12. Identify and locate career/employment options and opportunities.

13. Identify and locate continuing education options and opportunities as graduate programs.

14. Articulate the integration of their Christian Faith with the academic and professional field of Foreign Languages.

Major Requirements

Complete the following for your major:

Six credits from the following:

Six credits from the following:

Three credits in Linguistics:

Fifteen credits of the following:

Approved Spanish courses at the Universidad de Granada, the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso or Universidad de Adolfo Ibanez, Vina del Mar, Chile. Students must complete at least one Latin American or Spanish peninsular literature class (3 hours). Additional courses should be selected among a variety of humanities courses that may include grammar, literature, history, art history, or political science to attain a total of 15 credits of Spanish classes. Students should confirm with the Department of Modern Languages that the courses that they select are approved for the Spanish major.

Note: Students must complete a minimum of 33 credits in Spanish (SPAN).

QuEST Requirements

The writing requirement for this major is distributed among courses within the major.