Methodological Developments in Teaching Spanish as a Second and Foreign Language

This book on applied linguistics presents new trends and improvements on the teaching of Spanish. It deals with two major scopes in the field of linguistics that have a crucial role in the development of language teaching in general and of the teaching of Spanish in particular: Interaction and Grammar. The topics chosen coincide with the areas in which the communicative approach to language teaching dominant in European and American colleges and universities since the 1970s and 80s has been the object of most revision. In its first part, the book appeals both to pragmatics and to discourse analysis to research the specifics of classroom discourse and classroom interaction, as well as the differences between interactions among Spanish native speakers and interaction among non natives, in order to develop methodologies for the effective reincorporation of these aspects to the Spanish language classroom, such as tasks to teach interaction or techniques to implement learner-centered interactive class dynamics and cooperative learning. In its second part, this book reviews the pedagogical advantages of language description based on Cognitive Grammar theory and explains different aspects of the Spanish grammar. The main purpose of our contribution is to show how taking into account different dimensions of construal and perspective in linguistic representations helps teachers to elucidate idiosyncratic and subtle contrasts of Spanish structure that other views and approaches cannot clarify on a meaningful base, such as the aspectual opposition between preterits or the modal opposition between indicative and subjunctive, both of high importance for the English speaking student. The work selected for this book, done by experts from Columbia University and from several universities in Spain, represents the most current lines of inquiry in this post-communicative approach as applied specifically to the teaching of Spanish. This book seeks to be to be a must-read for present and future. It tackles unexplored territory, for journals and applied linguistics collections have mainly addressed these problems in relation to English language and instruction.