The Gap between Lower- and Upper-Division Spanish Courses: A Barrier to Coming up through the Ranks

Abstract

This study originated from an observation I made while teaching upper-division Spanish courses at the University of Utah. I became interested when I noticed that most, if not all, of my students, over a period of several quarters, had had outside experience with Spanish. That is, they had gotten noninstructional experience through living in a bilingual home, abroad, or in a Hispanic community in the United States. Of course, I realized that only the first five quarters of a foreign language were required in many university programs, and many students simply don't want to take upper-division foreign language courses. Nevertheless, neither of these facts seemed to explain why no one was reaching the upper-division courses without such experience. Certainly, students in the fields of biology, history or mathematics don't have to get experience in these respective areas in noninstructional settings in order to take upper-division courses. These impressions enlivened my curiosity, but I became even more concerned about the matter when I learned that Carroll had done a study in 1967 that supported my observations. He found that foreign language majors had generally had considerable experience with the language in noninstructional settings abroad. This finding helped sustain my interest in identifying factors associated with reaching advanced undergraduate Spanish courses. With this goal in mind, I conducted a pilot study in Winter '86 of the advanced grammar and composition courses (Spanish 451) and Spanish phonetics (Spanish 330). The findings of the pilot study prompted me to do an expanded study at the end of Spring '86. The primary purpose of this research was to discover the factors that are associated with: 1) students' reaching upperdivision (undergraduate) Spanish courses and 2) students' level of comfort in using Spanish. In other words, What does it take to reach 300 and 400 level courses? What might prevent others from arriving at those courses? and What contributes to comfort in producing and understanding oral and written Spanish?