The New York City schools' syllabus for the first year of high school Spanish instruction outlines a communicative curriculum conforming to state standards of preparation for state language proficiency examinations. The syllabus begins with an introductory section that describes the objectives and approach used and provides suggestions for…

An adult continuing education course in introductory Spanish is described. In planning the course, special attention was given to making course objectives realistic for the target population; rather than undertake a traditional college-level syllabus, academic and grammar-oriented in nature, the course was designed to provide students with basic…

A functional approach to language teaching begins with knowing how students intend to use the foreign language for specific purposes and in specific situations. Instructors of medical Spanish can begin by determining the specific language functions that their students must be able to express when communicating with Hispanic patients, by means of a…