Elementary Spanish II

Course Description

SPN1121C – Elementary Spanish II is a 4-credit-hour continuation of Elementary Spanish I, designed for students who have completed SPN1120C or its equivalent. The course expands students' command of the four communicative skills — listening, speaking, reading, and writing — through additional grammar, vocabulary, and cultural content. The "C" lab indicator denotes integrated lecture and laboratory components.

Instruction continues to follow the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency framework, targeting Novice-High to Intermediate-Low proficiency by course completion. The course emphasizes the use of past tenses, more complex sentence structures, and increased exposure to authentic Spanish-language materials from across the Spanish-speaking world.

SPN1121C is a Florida common course offered at approximately 40 Florida institutions. Together with SPN1120C, it satisfies the two-semester world-language general-education sequence required for many degree programs and contributes to State University System (SUS) admission language requirements.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Engage in extended interpersonal communication on familiar and some unfamiliar topics, including past events, future plans, opinions, and preferences.
• Demonstrate interpretive listening by understanding spoken Spanish narratives, descriptions, and conversations on familiar topics, including some authentic materials.
• Demonstrate interpretive reading of short, adapted and authentic Spanish texts (advertisements, articles, brief narratives) on familiar topics.
• Produce connected written and spoken discourse in Spanish using past, present, and future verb forms.
• Use preterite and imperfect past tenses appropriately to narrate past events, describe past states, and express habitual past actions.
• Apply direct, indirect, and reflexive object pronouns in speech and writing.
• Use commands (formal and informal) to give instructions and make requests.
• Express likes, dislikes, and preferences using gustar and similar verbs.
• Demonstrate increased cultural literacy regarding Spanish-speaking countries, including history, traditions, and contemporary issues.
• Compare and contrast cultural products, practices, and perspectives across the Spanish-speaking world and the United States.

Optional Outcomes

• Use the future and conditional tenses to discuss future plans and hypothetical situations.
• Recognize and produce present subjunctive forms in select contexts (introductory exposure).
• Engage with authentic media (short films, songs, news segments) from multiple Spanish-speaking regions.
• Apply Spanish to professional contexts relevant to the student's field of study or career.
• Conduct simple research projects in Spanish on cultural or topical themes.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Review of SPN1120C Foundations: Present tense, ser/estar, articles, agreement, basic question formation.
• Reflexive Verbs: Daily routine, personal care, reciprocal actions, and reflexive pronoun placement.
• Direct Object Pronouns: Forms, placement, agreement, and use in extended discourse.
• Indirect Object Pronouns: Forms, placement, and use with verbs like gustar, encantar, doler, faltar.
• Double Object Pronouns: Combining direct and indirect object pronouns; placement and the "se" substitution.
• Preterite Tense: Regular and common irregular verbs; use for completed past actions.
• Imperfect Tense: Regular and irregular verbs; use for habitual past actions, ongoing past states, and background description.
• Preterite vs. Imperfect: Contrast and combined use in narration.
• Formal and Informal Commands: Affirmative and negative; tú, usted, ustedes, and nosotros forms; pronoun placement with commands.
• Comparisons: Comparatives of equality and inequality; superlatives.
• Vocabulary Expansion: Travel, restaurant and food, shopping, health and the body, sports and leisure, technology, environment.
• Cultural Topics: Latin American and Spanish history, contemporary art and music, regional traditions and holidays, Hispanic contributions to U.S. society.

Optional Topics

• Future Tense: Regular and irregular forms for plans and predictions.
• Conditional Tense: Regular and irregular forms for politeness and hypothetical situations.
• Present Subjunctive (Introduction): Concept of mood; use after expressions of desire, doubt, and emotion (basic exposure).
• Por vs. Para: Distinguishing usage in extended communication.
• Florida Hispanic Heritage: Deeper exploration of Cuban-American, Puerto Rican, and Central/South American communities in Florida.

Resources & Tools

• Common Textbooks: Continuation of SPN1120C textbook — Puntos de partida, ¡Arriba!, Vistas, Aventuras, or Plazas
• Open Educational Resources: Acceso (University of Kansas), Libro Libre, LibreTexts Spanish materials
• Online Platforms: Vista Higher Learning Supersite, MyLab Spanish, McGraw-Hill Connect Spanish — required online homework typically continues from SPN1120C
• Reference Standards: ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines; ACTFL World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (5 Cs)
• Supplementary Resources: SpanishDict, WordReference.com, Conjuguemos, RAE dictionary, ProfeDeELE, Notes in Spanish (podcast)
• Authentic Materials: Spanish-language news (BBC Mundo, CNN en Español), short films, music, podcasts targeted at intermediate learners

Career Pathways

Completion of SPN1121C — particularly with continued study into intermediate and advanced Spanish — supports the same career pathways as SPN1120C with substantially increased professional utility. Students completing the elementary sequence (SPN1120C + SPN1121C) demonstrate measurable Spanish competency on resumes and may qualify for entry-level bilingual roles in:

• Healthcare Support Roles — Medical assistants, patient navigators, community health workers serving Hispanic populations.
• Customer Service and Hospitality — Hotel and theme-park guest services, call centers, retail.
• Education Support — Paraprofessionals and tutors in schools serving English-language learners.
• Public Service — Government agencies, social services, public safety where bilingual capacity is preferred.
• Trade and Logistics — Florida's port-driven import/export sector, particularly with Latin America.

Continued Spanish study toward intermediate (SPN2200/2201) and advanced levels significantly enhances earning potential and opens career-track bilingual professional roles.

Special Information

General Education and Transfer

SPN1121C is a Florida common course number. Together with SPN1120C, it satisfies the two-semester world-language general-education sequence at most Florida public colleges and universities and meets State University System (SUS) admission language requirements (typically two semesters of college-level world language or two years of high school world language).

Articulation and Sequence

SPN1121C is the prerequisite for SPN2200 (Intermediate Spanish I), continuing the four-semester elementary-and-intermediate sequence offered at most Florida institutions. Students intending to major or minor in Spanish should plan to continue through SPN2201 and into upper-division coursework.

Placement and Heritage Learners

Students with significant Spanish exposure (heritage speakers, those who completed three or four years of high school Spanish, or who tested out of SPN1120C) should consult an advisor about placement. Heritage speakers are typically directed to specialized heritage-learner sequences (SPN1340/SPN1341) rather than the standard sequence.