Mester Spanish Courses

This program offers a total of twelve credit hours which students would receive upon completion of all requirements. The classes will be taught by a Truman State faculty member and the faculty at Academia Mester in Salamanca.

Students will participate in a ten-week pre-departure course on campus during spring semester prior to the trip. For those students away from TSU, this component of the program will be made available by internet instruction.

Most (but not all) of those hours in the ten week course would be part of the culture component of the program. Some of those hours would be dedicated to help students prepare for the trip by instructing them on basic information, cultural issues, traditions, and customs of Spain.

Once in Spain, students will also participate in the culture daily by living with a host family, by taking part of the many group activities as well as taking trips to various parts of the country.

In Salamanca, language and conversation courses for all eight levels will be offered: beginning I&II, intermediate I&II, advanced I&II, and superior I&II. Students will also attend a culture class offered in Spanish. There will be twenty (20) classroom hours (at Truman) for the pre-departure course and seven (7) classroom hours*** of instruction M-TH, five (5) classroom hours of instruction on Friday, five (5) days a week (in Spain). There will be six (6) full weeks of instruction in Salamanca, and two (2) additional weeks of traveling to Catalonia, Castile, and Andalusia.

Students will have two additional weeks after they return to the United States to complete a research paper on a cultural topic. For advanced students, there are also some literature classes available, and arrangements can be made in advance to receive credit for one (1) of those courses.

*** 1 (one) classroom hour = 50 minutes of classroom contact time in Spain
There are a total of two hundred eighteen (218) academic contact hours before, during and after the trip. This total does not include the eighty plus (80+) hours that students spend in structured academic visits to museums and historical sites. Twelve (12) credit hours are granted upon completion of all requirements. This very conservative computing of the total amount of hours spent in academic engaging activities is comparable to the forty-five (45) contact hours the students have on campus for each three (3) credit hour class. This experience abroad is the equivalent to four three-credit hour courses.

For more detailed information on the number of contact hours / credit ratio, contact:

Silvia Pites, Ph.D.
Division of Language & Literature
Truman State University
Kirksville, MO 63501
Tel: (660) 785-4060
Fax: (660) 785-7486
pites@truman.edu