The year 2017 saw the publication of one of the strongest endorsements of language education on record: "America's Languages: Investing in Language Education for the 21st Century" (henceforth "America's Languages"). Commissioned by a bipartisan group of members of Congress and authored by the Commission on Language Learning of…

This essay looks at the representation of disability in the recent Spanish film "Yo, tambien" through the lens of disability studies, understood as a political project. The film's portrayal of a character who is, like the actor who plays him, Europe's first university graduate with Down syndrome, is unique. Moreover, "Yo,…

This article argues that Eduardo Lopez Bago's "La prostituta" evidences a deprivileging of a "visual" approach to narration and of the sensorial predominance of sight. Rather, Lopez Bago harnesses odors and deploys them as an important structuring device and a central generator of meaning, permitting his novel to be judged on its ability to evoke…

The time has come to create a realistic grammar syllabus in the beginning language courses. Yet why do some in the profession insist that all grammar must be taught in the first year of language learning? Abundant data from decades of research on topics such as human memory, chunking, and second language acquisition exist that overwhelmingly…

Two recent reports offer some paradigm-shifting proposals regarding the teaching of world languages in general at the undergraduate level. The Modern Language Association's (MLA's) "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" and "Report to the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature"…

According to the author, the Modern Language Association's (MLA's) recent publication of the reports "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" and "Report to the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature" concerning foreign language education has caused many of them to reexamine the…

Presents a conflation of and a comparison between the 1,646 verbs the Royal Academy's "Diccionario de la lengua espanola" (Dictionary of the Spanish Language) classifies as solely or partly intransitive and the 1,382 verbs that are so classified by the "Pequeno Larousse ilustrado" (Illustrated Larousse Small Dictionary).…

Provides a list of recently published children's books in Spanish for Spanish-speaking children or students learning Spanish as a second or foreign language. The list is divided into one section for very young children and another for middle grade students. Information is also given about a Web site where users can access a searchable database of…

Explores the interrelationships among mood usage, syntactic contrast and past temporal reference in Spanish. Describes specific effects of varying temporal reference on mood and syntactic signaling, and employs an inventory of five subjunctive determining matrices to show that such effects are best explained by means of a…

Traces history of Aztec language and culture to show how traces remain in modern Spanish and how they have contributed to other languages. (BK)

Argues that the need exists for a medical Spanish course designed specifically for Spanish majors, especially for those students who are following the pre-med sequence required for entrance to medical school. (20 references) (GLR)

Analysis of the indicative-subjunctive alternation in the compliment of interrogative utterances with the verb "creer" shows that the "modality of reserved epistemic" determines choice of subjunctive. This determination contributes to a hypothesis about the nature of the subjunctive in Spanish. (CP)

Explores the less-studied subordinate concessive clauses in Spanish from a pragmalinguistic standpoint in mainly interactive contexts. Discusses the discursive dimension of the subjunctive consisting of the reformulation of a previously given context. (Author/VWL)

Summarizes some findings on mood selection in Spanish resulting from various research projects and suggests guidelines for teaching the subjunctive at the beginning level. Suggests that teachers concentrate on commands and adverbial expressions in the beginning levels because they constitute the structures most needed to engage in speech. (SED)

Regardless of the syntactic variation of the direct object "a" in Spanish, a great deal of semantic unity underlies its use. Argues that it carries an invariant meaning that is present in every use of the form, and, concomitantly, its absence before a direct object carries an equally invariant meaning within the systematic semantic structure of…