Apr
16
And the wrapping up…
Posted by: | April 16, 2010 | Comments Off on And the wrapping up…
I really enjoyed the structure of this course- the blogs, the wikipedia project, the reading list (that was pretty outstanding)- all fine holiday fun! But I still have to say, for the amount of stuff we went over or tried to go over, we needed way more time. We did NOT have enough time to read Cien Años for example and I still have so many questions about modern Latin American literature my head is spinning. And I know this complaint is perhaps more aimed at the structure of the university classes as a whole, but there was something about this specific class where I didn’t feel as satisfied with what I was learning as I have with other Literature classes within the Spanish department.
I feel like the course started out with a lot of ambition and a great lesson plan, (I was so excited the first day!) but in the end it just didn’t deliver for me. Organization kinda went awry for one. Why didn’t we discuss more of McOndo? Why we didn’t use the last week of classes to make up the two classes we missed during Cien Años is way beyond me?
Perhaps it was class time? That always felt rushed and I think us students had a lot more to say than we were given time for. That’s why we had the blogs I understand, but there’s something about face to face debate and direct discussion that shouldn’t be overlooked, especially in second language (for the majority of us, second language) course.
Perhaps it’s that I’m really intrigued by the subject matter and any course confined to a semester would be too little for me? I can’t really say.
But my final conclusion for the course is that it started out with a lot of ambition and a good structure but in the end it just didn’t deliver for me. There just wasn’t the zeal in the class that I had expected from the syllabus.
Reading others’ complaints I realize I must seem really harsh by saying this. It’s true, compared to other Spanish courses I’ve taken in the department, this course wasn’t terrible, it was good actually, but I expected it to be awesome and it wasn’t that exactly. I also realize, as unreasonable as I know it is, what I really want out of Spanish courses at UBC is an another immersion experience. Or at least an experience where I can see how the world changes and opens up to me when I speak a different language. It makes me wonder, because I know the majority of Spanish majors learned their Spanish abroad, how many of us students allow their Spanish courses to be sub-par because they’re not in a Spanish speaking country? Is the department just there to keep us practicing or do we take these classes to really question and investigate the Spanish language, its literature and its culture?
