Courses

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The Spanish as a Foreign Language Program of the University of Costa Rica offers the following language (basic, intermediate, advanced, superior) and complementary courses:

(Courses are opened with a minimum of three students)

BASIC
LE-101-A 1– Basic Spanish 1
This course is addressed to students who have little or no knowledge of Spanish and need to acquire a basic level of competence in the four skills to develop: speaking, writing, listening and reading. In addition to this, the course also covers topics that introduce the student to general aspects of Costa Rican and Latin American culture.

LE-103-A2 – Basic Spanish 2
The course is addressed to students that have basic knowledge of Spanish language (level A1 – Basic Spanish 1) and wish to improve their speaking and writing, as well as their reading and listening. The main topic studied is the past tense, used to describe and narrate facts, places and daily as well as historical situations. Furthermore, students will also study vocabulary related to preferences, customs, traditions and the time and weather in different cultures.

INTERMEDIATE
LE-201-B1 – Intermediate Spanish 1
In the intermediate level courses the skills acquired in previous levels are reinforced thanks to activities that increase the students communicative competence. By the end of this level, students will be able to speak fluently about diverse topics related to daily life, as well as more specific fields. The course is addressed to students that have the basic knowledge of the Spanish language (A1-A2) and that wish to improve their speaking, listening, reading and writing interaction skills.

LE-202-B2 – Intermediate Spanish 2
The B2 course is addressed to students that have intermediate knowledge of the Spanish language (level B1) and wish to improve their oral, written, reading and writing interaction skills. By the end of this level, students will be able to develop their communicative abilities for the comprehension and production of more elaborate texts in Spanish -oral as well as written-, associated to daily situations and more complex topics such as: cultural exchange; society, family, education; opinions and reported speech; work and its relation to migration, women and young people; Latin American cinema.

ADVANCED

LE-401 – Advanced Spanish 1
The course is addressed to students that have an upper intermediate level in Spanish (previous level B2) and wish to improve their linguistic and cultural competence in this language by developing the four skills: speaking, writing, listening and reading. In this level, the student will learn grammatical, conversational cultural and textual strategies for the comprehension and production of texts; all of this with the objective of understanding and producing simple and complex texts related to daily as well as specialized topics such as: politics, architecture, society, etc.

LE-402 – Advanced Spanish 2
This course is addressed to students who have advanced knowledge of the Spanish language (previous level: Avanced 1) and wish to improve their linguistic and cultural competence in this language by developing the four skills: speaking, writing, listening and reading.
In this level, the student will become familiar with linguistic, textual, conversacional and cultural strategies related to discourse organization, such as: narration, exposition, argumentation and description; with the aim of understanding and producing coherent and cohesive texts that vary in complexity.

SUPERIOR
LE-501 – Spanish Superior Level
In this course, the Spanish language is studied in depth through different theoretical perspectives such as morphology, syntax, pragmatics and dialectology. In the cultural level, the student gets in contact with complex oral and written cultural texts that require a deeper analysis of the Spanish situation in relation to cultural variables of Spanish speaking countries.
COMPLEMENTARY COURSES
CO-210/310/410 – Conversation
This course focuses on improving the interaction abilities in oral contexts so that students can reinforce the knowledge they have acquired in the language course through oral activities such as  conversations, speeches, interviews, debates, movie reviews, among others.

CO-211/311/411 Grammar
This course focuses on the study of Spanish grammar. It is an excellent complement to the language courses, since these have a communicative and functional emphasis. For this reason, a grammar course contributes to strengthening the precision of structure, verb conjugation and Spanish syntax.

ELECTIVE COURSES
Linguistics
Phonetics and Phonology, Morphology and Syntax, Dialectology, Pragmatics.

Literature
Latin American, Spanish, Central American, Contemporary.

Culture
Latin American Cinema, Latin American and Costarican Culture, Culture History, Intercultural communication.

Applied Linguistics
Emphasis on Business, Law or Medicine.

Special Courses
Grammar and culture, Composition, for inheritance speakers.