pISSN 12631-2840

eISSN 2631-2859

kronos.idiomas@uce.edu.ec

REVISTA KRONOS

INSTITUTO ACADÉMICO DE IDIOMAS REVISTA KRONOS

UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DEL ECUADOR 4(1), febrero-julio 2023, pp. 43-53

DOI: https://doi.org/10.29166/kronos.v4i1.4009

CC BY-NC 4.0 —Licencia Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial 4.0 Internacional

Chita Espino-Bravo | Fort Hays State University (EE. UU.)

abstract In this study I explain how an advanced Spanish conversation course can be created for virtual students us-

ing Spanish for Specic Purposes. The course is divided in dierent online homework students need to work on using

four Hispanic lms. This course is taught online and asynchronously. Students need to watch four lms in this course,

work on quizzes about the lms, work on debates, and group presentations that are uploaded on VT (Voice Thread).

The most important aspect of creating an advanced Spanish conversation course online is to dene the goals and out-

comes of the course very well and nd the lms that best serve to teach Spanish language and vocabulary related to the

professions. Most lms had a main topic, but there were other themes as well in the lms students could learn about

and use as interesting topics for their presentations in Spanish.

key words Spanish for Specic Purposes, Hispanic Film and Culture, Hispanic Issues and Professions, Advanced Spanish

Conversation online, Virtual Conversation Course, Creating an Online Conversation Class with Films for SSP.

fecha de recepción 20/08/2022 fecha de aprobación 23/01/2023

Lenguaje para propósitos especícos: uso de películas hispanas y temas hispanos actuales para

enseñar vocabulario especíco y contexto relacionado con las profesiones en línea

resumen En este estudio explico cómo se puede crear un curso avanzado de conversación en español para estudiantes vir-

tuales que utilizan el español con nes especícos. El curso se divide en diferentes tareas que los estudiantes efectúan on-

line teniendo en cuenta cuatro películas hispanas que son parte del contenido del curso. Este curso se imparte online y de

forma asíncrona. Los estudiantes deben ver cuatro películas en este curso, tomar pruebas cortas sobre las películas y tra-

bajar en debates y presentaciones grupales que se cargan en VT (Voice Thread). El aspecto más importante de crear un

curso avanzado de conversación en español virtual es denir muy bien los objetivos y resultados del curso y encontrar las

películas que mejor sirvan para enseñar el idioma español y el vocabulario relacionado con las profesiones. La mayoría de

las películas tenían un tema principal, pero también había subtemas en las películas que los estudiantes podían usar como

contenidos interesantes para sus presentaciones en español.

palabras clave Español con nes especícos, cine y cultura hispana, asuntos y profesiones hispanas, conversación en es-

pañol avanzado online, curso de conversación virtual, creación de una clase de conversación online con películas para

español con nes especícos.

Language for Specic Purposes: using Hispanic lms and current

Hispanic issues to teach specic vocabulary and context related

to the professions online

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Language for specic purposes: using Hispanic lms and current Hispanic issues to teach specic vocabulary and context related to the professions online

CREATING AN ONLINE ADVANCED SPANISH CONVERSATION COURSE

In an advanced Spanish conversation class that is taught online, it may seem hard to teach

Hispanic issues and specic vocabulary related to the professions, but it is not impossible.

In this study, we will talk about a course we created some semesters ago that was taught

on campus, and it was called Spanish Advanced Conversation. It was created as an elec-

tive (600 level) for the new program in the Modern Languages Department at fhsu,

as we were creating a new track that was Spanish for Specic Purposes (the profes-

sions). This course met originally three times per week on campus and aimed at prepar-

ing students to improve their conversational Spanish skills at the advanced level. Spanish

for Specic Purposes (

ssp) was used for this course using Hispanic Films that directly or

indirectly dealt with specic professions our students were preparing themselves for in our

Spanish program (Business, Translation & Interpretation, and Medical Spanish). The on-

line version of this course was designed to have the same content, but was delivered vir-

tually and with some minor variations, as students instead of presenting in the classroom,

would present in groups and on Voice Thread (vt). The online course would also not

meet face to face, so participation in this course was done on vt. Students could create a

thread with their opinion and critical comments on the group presentation on vt. It was

an asynchronous course where students worked at their own pace, and homework had to

be turned in on the due dates. We also needed to create a course that had balanced con-

tent between content-area knowledge and linguistic content. As Trace (2015) explains:

Going back to one of the original questions about

lsp

and the balance between content-area knowledge

and linguistic content, one issue that seems conveniently lost in this discussion is about the degree

to which access to content-area information is even available. Compared to esp, most areas of lsp are

considerably under-developed, and outside of the more common areas such as Language for Business

or Medical Purposes, materials and existing information are often all but absent. For many

lsp devel-

opers particularly those addressing needs related to local contexts or lctls-access to both instructional

materials and content-area expertise can be a real concern. It becomes less of question of how to bal-

ance language and content, and more about whether it is even possible to do so in the rst place. (12)

We had limited resources to access and copy a course idea, so we ended up designing a

new course that balanced both components, the content-area knowledge, and the linguis-

tic content. We also needed to have into account the target community we were serving

with this new course. As Trace (2015) explains:

Another major theme that aects the design of most

lsp

programs is the role of the target community.

As we saw with culture and content, lsp courses are not taught in isolation, but rather in direct re

sponse to a specic and identied context. How this context is dened can have a signicant eect on

the entire structure of the course. We can divide

lsp

contexts into two categories: local contexts and

global contexts. Local contexts are those where the L2 is being used as a fl within a targeted commu-

nity of L1 speakers of the language. (10)

Students taking this Advanced Spanish Conversation course (face to face, or online) were

mostly students from dierent programs who were learning Spanish for Specic Purpos-

es in our department. Some students were in business, others were in nursing and radiol-

ogy, and a smaller group were majors in our Spanish Program.

USING HISPANIC FILMS FOR SPANISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES:

COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH AND TASKED-BASED ACTIVITIES

Communicative Language Teaching sees meaningful communication as the goal whereas

Task-Based Learning Approach takes it a bit further, so students need to communicate in or-

der to achieve or do a meaningful task. Both acknowledge the importance of real authentic

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Chita Espino-Bravo

meaningful communication as a way to learn a language. Specic vocabulary and sentences

in Spanish were used in the debates and presentations students had to prepare. Students/

attendees not only learned the words, but new Spanish syntactical structures as well and

how to use the new vocabulary in context. Yiqng Lin (2020) explains the dierence be-

tween tblt and clt:

The dierence between tblt and clt is that they take dierent routes to achieve the goal of commu-

nicative competence, and frame tasks dierently.

clt

engages students in the function of language use,

whilst tblt focuses on improve the comprehension-based competence of language use. However, the

approaches have many more similarities than dierences. Although clt has fallen from favor, tblt,

exists as a development of the communicative approach, covering shortcomings in both theory and

practice, creating a diverse environment for communication and interaction. (24)

There is limited material and resources on Spanish for Specic Purposes to use for ad-

vanced and graduate courses. Many lsp instructors and course designers would agree to

the need to have more resources to help create dierent course models for lsp and ssp.

When designing a new advanced conversation course for Spanish Majors in the ssp Pro-

gram, and Graduates, we need to make it interesting and address the professions they are

preparing for from dierent perspectives. Since there are little resources, we had to be cre-

ative. As Jonathan Trace explains in his book chapter and conclusion of the book (2015),

“[…] what is to be done in regard to choosing or designing materials for lsp? While there

is no simple answer, through looking at the proposals presented here we can point to sev-

eral possible alternatives that curriculum developers and teachers might pursue” (12). It

is important to have in mind that the course you want to design using ssp addresses lan-

guage and culture learning at the same time. Trace (2015) explains:

For most

lsp

contexts, the culture of the community seems almost as important to learn as the linguistic

content itself. Learning a foreign language for any purpose is about more than simply acquiring gram-

matical structures, vocabulary, or uency, but rather a part of what makes it valuable is the cultural

aordances that it provides. Knowing a language has long been understood as a way of opening the

door for learners to understand, acknowledge, and negotiate other ways of thinking and viewing the

world. (7)

Films were an ideal resource to use as they present the stories, lives, and situations of dif-

ferent people and their cultures. They were also chosen in the target language, that is in

Spanish, to convey specic vocabulary that needed to be learned, specic cultural context

for that vocabulary, and the most important, specic vocabulary related to the professions

we wanted them to learn. While designing this course, we also had in mind what Trace

(2015) explains here:

Looking at the proposals presented here, four common themes seem to stand out as being consistent

and important in the development and implementation of LSP. In no particular order, these are: (a)

learner prociency; (b) culture as content; (c) the target community; and (d) existing information.

While these concepts will probably sound familiar to most language teachers in some form or another,

they take on a slightly dierent meaning when we consider them in relation to the development and

implementation of lsp. (2)

Trace explains that the learner’s prociency is subject to standardization through the es-

tablishment of scales, like the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages (actfl),

or the guidelines used in the Common European Framework (3). We agree with Trace

when he explains how this would work for Language for Specic Purposes: “In lsp, how-

ever, we commonly approach prociency from a more local perspective in terms of lin-

guistic competence on its own or in relation to content-area knowledge or even cultural

knowledge” (3). It is for this reason we decided to use Films as the main resource, and all

the cultural backgrounds they brought into a class activity created for Spanish for Specif-

ic Purposes. This would also be considered for the virtual version of the course. We also

agree with Mallinger and Rossy (2003) when they say, “[…] lms tell stories about people,

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Language for specic purposes: using Hispanic lms and current Hispanic issues to teach specic vocabulary and context related to the professions online

their hopes, dreams, challenges, and fears, how they relate to others, and what behaviors

are socially acceptable (and unacceptable). As such, lm provides an important represen-

tation of cultures and their salient issues” (3). Mallinger and Rossy also think that lm

helps address two of the most dicult issues in management education, which are mo-

tivation and retention. Students today are accustomed to learning through multi-media.

They become easily bored or distracted by more traditional pedagogies. As a generation

raised on television, lm, and computers, they are more receptive to and learning through

lm (4). I believe it applies to most students of younger generations. Mallinger and Rossy

also mention Campoux and Postman saying that lm is also likely to improve retention

by providing strong images and emotional content (4).

The course goals we created were stated clearly for the Advanced Spanish Conver-

sation course, and we had into account the language ability of each student in relation to

individual improvement, not just how well a student used the language in general (Trace,

2). There needed to be new vocabulary and language structure learning and usage incorpo-

rated into the class activities we were designing for this course. Using the Communicative

Approach and Task-Based Activities (group debates and group presentations), we made

sure students had to use the new learned material in their debates and presentations in

class, or on Voice Thread (

) in the online course. We would also focus on specic topics

related to the professions, which were the cultural context of the vocabulary and structures

students were learning in this Advanced Spanish Conversation course. Trace explains that

in the following quote:

For most

lsp

contexts, the culture of the community seems almost as important to learn as the linguistic

content itself. Learning a foreign language for any purpose is about more than simply acquiring gram-

matical structures, vocabulary, or uency, but rather a part of what makes it valuable is the cultural

aordances that it provides. Knowing a language has long been understood as a way of opening the

door for learners to understand, acknowledge, and negotiate other ways of thinking and viewing the

world. (7)

To add one more step of complexity to the learning of specic vocabulary and structures

related to the professions, the presentations were chosen by the students, after the instruc-

tor approved them. Students had to choose a controversial topic related to the lm they

watched and visit a Hispanic country and research about it. This was done to incorporate

the cultural component about the Hispanic world into the learning activity, which was to

be developed by the students while they researched about the topic and the Hispanic coun-

try of their choice. Buendía Cambronero (2013) explains:

In the teaching of language in its general scope, culture has taken a predominant role following the

consolidation of the communicative approach and task-based learning in the nineties. It is widely

accepted that language learning implies cultural comprehension alongside linguistic acquisition. This

linguistic acquisition can hardly be complete or may even be ineective if it is not accompanied by

correct use in a cultural sense. However, this general armation is still a problematic issue when it

comes to including cultural content in learning materials or syllabuses. What aspects of culture should

be included in each stage of the learning process? How can culture be taught so that it avoids stereo-

types or axiomatic messages? (https://journals.openedition.org/apliut/3570).

Buendía Cambronero is trying to dene what cultural aspects should be included for a Busi-

ness Spanish course. In our case, we would specify the culture we want to include with the

lms we chose for the Advanced Spanish Conversation course. The lms talked about a

country, some characters, and their lives. The lm director had a vision about that country

and used the characters to present a story. The story was part of a culture. The characters

also belonged to a country and a culture, and we learned about their stories through the

vision of the director. The culture we wanted to include in the Advanced Spanish Conver-

sation course was any aspect of a Hispanic country, the culture of that country, the Span-

ish language variations, and the accents the characters brought to the scenes, the behaviors

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Chita Espino-Bravo

the characters portrayed, the social norms and cultural aspects that were part of that coun-

try, and so on. All the chosen lms had a connection to a profession as well, where specif-

ic vocabulary could be learned in context. This would make the learning more eective, as

students could hear where the vocabulary and the specic linguistic structure were used in

the lm, which was in the professional context. Films present the imitation of life, and the

cultural contexts the lm provided helped students understand and acquire the new vo-

cabulary related to the professions. We also learn about other themes in the lms, as lms

normally deal with secondary characters, and their lives and problems as well.

Each student would learn a dierent aspect about the Hispanic country and the related

controversial topic. We included ‘controversial’ topics to create debates and an interesting

conversation between the dierent groups in class and online. Trace explains (2015):

The link between culture and language is inseparable for many authors, especially when paired with

a specic purpose. More so than language for general purposes, especially at advanced levels that are

devoted to language and literature,

lsp is about language in use within specic domains that are situ-

ated within a target language community. Though culture was already mentioned as a viable tool for

teaching in beginner level classes, it is just as important with more procient learners as well, and we

have examples of this in the chapters on Business Language. (8)

Using

lsp

to create a new Advanced Spanish Conversation course became then an asset, as

we had to come up what students needed to learn at this advanced level, what grammar

needed to be reviewed, what specic vocabulary was going to be part of the course activ-

ities, and what needed to be acquired through the lms, debates, and presentations. The

goals for the course had all these components in mind. Trace (2015) explains:

After all, the very reason we are engaging in lsp development is to delineate language ability in terms

of a particular target language use or purpose, and indeed one of the goals we should set for our

needs analysis is to determine the specic language abilities our learners need to acquire. In contrast,

consider that many languages for general purposes programs set their outcomes according to actfl

prociency guidelines for the very reason that actual target language uses are often hard to determine

in these contexts. (4)

In our Advanced Spanish Conversation course, students had to view four Hispanic lms

that were part of the course that dealt with current Hispanic issues, and they would have

to take a short quiz to prove they had watched the lm. Then they had to prepare a de-

bate about an assigned topic (Task-Based Activity). The topic was related to the dierent

themes we could nd in the lm. Students worked in groups for the debate and record-

ed themselves speaking between 5-10 minutes on the topic in front of a camera. Final-

ly, they had to do a longer presentation on a topic they would choose (with approval of

the instructor of the class), and which would also be related to one of the lm’s dierent

themes. The presentation topic needed to present a controversial aspect of the topic and

invite other students to debate and comment on the topic in the target language. It needed

to be related as well to one Hispanic country. Students would learn about how that His-

panic country would deal with an issue, or aspect of an issue. Videos of their debates and

group presentations were uploaded on

vt.

The goals in this Advanced Spanish Conversation class were the following:

- Learn and use new idiomatic expressions in Spanish.

- Acquire more condence to communicate in Spanish.

- Learn and use new vocabulary in Spanish about the business world, medical Spanish, and

translation/interpretation.

- Acquire precision when using specic vocabulary.

- Acquire, use, and practice specialized vocabulary related to the studied topics.

- Dominate complex grammatical structures in Spanish.

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Language for specic purposes: using Hispanic lms and current Hispanic issues to teach specic vocabulary and context related to the professions online

- Debate about dierent controversial and current topics of the Hispanic world and learn

about diversity.

- Augment listening comprehension and improve Spanish pronunciation.

- Research current aairs in Spanish (A. Writer, 2017).

It is important to remember that creating a course having in mind Language for the Pro-

fessions needed to be carefully developed and thought through to be able to teach specic

objectives. Hudson and Brown in Developing Courses in Languages for Specic Purposes ex-

plain that:

Language for specic purposes (lsp) courses are those in which the methodology, the content, the ob-

jectives, the materials, the teaching, and the assessment practices all stem from specic, target language

uses based on an identied set of specialized needs. Common examples of lsp include courses like

Japanese for Business, Spanish for Doctors, Mandarin for Tourism, or English for Air-trac Control-

lers. In each of these cases, the content and focus of the language instruction is narrowed to a specic

context or even a particular subset of tasks and skills. (2)

The Spanish conversation course aimed at having the online students create and deliver

debates and presentations in Spanish at the advanced level. They were to learn new vo-

cabulary related to the professions through the cultural context the lms presented. The

dierent lms that were used for this advanced conversation course were: María llena eres

de gracia (Maria Full of Grace) (2004), directed by Joshua Marston; Todo sobre mi madre

(All about My Mother) (1999), directed by Pedro Almodóvar; ESL: English as a Second Lan-

guage (2005), directed by Youssef Delara; César Chávez (2014), directed by Diego Luna;

and La misma luna (Under the Same Moon) (2007), directed by Patricia Riggen. What all

these movies have in common is the presentation of the life and problems of common,

diverse, and marginalized people (A. Writer, 2017). The lms also use specic vocabu-

lary related to dierent professions, like the medical terminology and vocabulary related

to diseases we could nd in Todo sobre mi madre (All about My Mother) (1999), for exam-

ple, or esl: English as a Second Language (2005), where the protagonist learns English at

an esl School to improve his skills and be able to get a better job in the us, even though

he is an undocumented illegal immigrant. Students in this course also had to write down

and dene three or four words they had learned during the research done for the debates

and presentations and had to use each word at least once during their presentation. This

helped learn new vocabulary related to the topic and use it and remember it for the fu-

ture. For this reason, all the selected lms had sub-topics related to the medical, business,

and translation/interpretation worlds, so each group would learn specic vocabulary re-

lated to these professional elds and use them in their debates. In this way, each student

was able to discuss issues and vocabulary related to the specic professions in Spanish at

the advanced level (A. Writer, 2017).

It was important to learn to give good presentations about the chosen topics. Students

were required to sit at a table and look professional in front of the camera. They were

asked to use ear buds as well for better sound quality. They were not allowed to read the

presentation. They had to present it. They would start memorizing specic information

about their presentation, but eventually, they would be able to use their own Spanish

structures, and present without memorizing. Barbara A. Laord, Ann Abbott and Darcy

Lear explain in “Spanish in the professions and in the community in the us” (2014) that:

In upper division language courses, more opportunities to develop real-world, professional skills

present themselves. For example, classroom presentations are an opportunity to develop professional

presentation skills. Students know all the signs of a bad presentation (reading or reciting, going over

time limits, repeating content that the audience already knows, lack of practice, abuse of PowerPoint),

but when it comes time to present, they default to these presentation modes, which they know are

bad, because they have never been explicitly taught how to do it better. A good presenter practices and

polishes to achieve the perfect balance between scripted and spontaneous. To increase engagement with

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Chita Espino-Bravo

presentation content, students should choose topics related to their professional aspirations: literature

is full of references to public health, illness, commerce, and economic models. (178)

Students were allowed to choose the presentation topic, but it had to be related to the

lm they had watched, and it needed to incorporate newly learned vocabulary and Span-

ish linguistic structures. Students were also taught how to give good presentations, by ex-

plaining they needed to focus on the important information and not get lost in the details.

It was important to follow a format, that is, students had to sit at a table and follow basic

instructions on how to place the camera, so their faces and bodies would be centered on

the computer screen. The information they delivered needed to be relevant and related to

the topic they had chosen, and it needed to be a formal presentation. It was important to

also allow students to express the ideas with their own words. They could only read data

or statistics if they needed to.

The lms for the course were carefully chosen so they would present content and

vocabulary related to specic professions our students are preparing themselves for. It was

important to have students present well in the target language about a controversial topic,

so they would use the vocabulary related to the specic profession they were learning

about in each lm. But the vocabulary was not the only content students were learning, as

Barbara A. Laord, Ann Abbott and Darcy Lear explain (2014):

Profession-specic vocabulary is important, of course, and should be threaded into the curriculum.

However, instead of giving students long vocabulary lists to memorize, LSP educators can approach

the acquisition of professional jargon as yet another foundational professional skill that students should

develop. (176)

Through the lms where vocabulary was used in a specic context, and through the de-

bates and the presentations, students would learn and better retain new vocabulary for

dierent professions and acquire other words and structures from the professional world.

The aim of each debate and presentation was to prepare the students be able to talk about

a specic profession, related controversial topics, and use the vocabulary related to that

profession in Spanish. An example is Todo sobre mi madre (All about My Mother) (1999),

directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Students learned about specic vocabulary related to medi-

cine and nursing. For example: sida (aids), Sero positivo/negativo (hiv positive/negative),

transfusión de sangre (blood transfusion), encefalograma (encephalogram), ecografía (ul-

trasound), embarazo (pregnancy), donación de órganos (organ donation), muerte cerebral

(brain death), donador y receptor (donor and recipient), Alzheimer, and so on. Students

would be able to learn/acquire specic medical vocabulary from the lm that was used in

the medical context. By watching a lm where this new vocabulary was used in context,

students would understand it better and remember it.

The online course was divided into ve parts, exactly as was the campus course: lm,

quiz, test, debate, and presentation. The online course was asynchronous, and students

worked on their own organizing their homework. Homework was turned in on due dates

assigned by the instructor. The rst stage was to watch the lm, then students would take

a short quiz on Blackboard about the main characters and the plot. The conversation class

was divided into Blackboard groups of three or four to work on debates with a specic

topic assigned by the instructor. The groups then presented the debate on

and some

brought questions for the class to create a debate. After the debates, students worked on

longer group presentations that dealt with a controversial topic each group chose (A.

Writer, 2017). With the debates and the assigned topic, students would be able to explore

the vocabulary related to the lm and a profession. The debate would prepare the students

for the group presentation where they needed to talk about a controversial topic related to

the lm and the Hispanic world. An example of this would be the topic “Transsexuality in

Mexico. What is the situation of transexuals in this country? What are the challenges and

issues trans people experience in Mexico? What does Mexico do to solve the social margin-

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Language for specic purposes: using Hispanic lms and current Hispanic issues to teach specic vocabulary and context related to the professions online

alization of this group?” This topic would be researched and students in the group would

divide the topic into dierent sections. All aspects of this topic needed to be researched

and addressed in the group presentation and it was done in Spanish.

The Advanced Spanish Conversation course was also created for the graduate stu-

dents. All students worked on 4 debates and 4 group presentations. Graduate students

would have one extra lm and one extra presentation to work on as part of their course

work. Using Ruggiero’s ideas about the audience for whom you create a Spanish for Spe-

cic Purposes graduate course (2014), the course was created for an external audience, “…

the students who want to “consume” or take the classes and who will benet from learning

how to use languages in such a specic manner” (61). It was important to create a course

that incorporated dierent aspects of ssp into our language program, and it needed to be

relevant and interesting to the students who took it who were studying Spanish for the

Professions, and for the students who were not interested in languages for the professions

as well. As Ruggiero explains (2014): “The needs of students in the twenty-rst century

are changing. It is imperative that graduate programs in foreign languages broaden their

goals, objectives, and course oerings beyond a focus on literary and language competency

in order to remain relevant” (68). Students want to be able to use the foreign language

skills they are learning in their future professions, and this course helped create a space

where students could practice that at the advanced level. It was very important to make

this course available for online students, as they have the same needs as the campus ones.

Students have dierent reasons why they study languages. As Laura Marqués-Pascual

explains (2019):

Students may be interested in learning Spanish for a myriad of purposes. Some students’ goal may be to

become medical or court interpreters, conduct international business, manage a non-prot organization,

become a Spanish or English as a second language teacher, work as an international tour guide, work

for the

fbi, do mission work internationally, or serve in the Peace Corps. All of these are examples of

Spanish for professional purposes. On the other hand, some students may be interested in learning

Spanish to study content courses for a semester or a year at a Spanish-speaking university. This is an

example of Spanish for academic purposes. (281)

In any of the cases, when creating a ssp course (for campus or online students) at the ad-

vanced level, you need to have into account the dierent needs dierent students might

have. Not all students will be interested in the same professions, so choosing dierent

lms with dierent stories and characters, dierent topics and vocabulary related to dif-

ferent professions was important. The cultural component each movie presented was also

very important as it gave context to a story and the language used for that story. Lan-

guage learning through lms helps students visualize the context the language is used in

(specic language and vocabulary used in a hospital, or in a business, for example). Us-

ing Hispanic lms where specic language and vocabulary for the dierent professions is

used and where dierent topics could be studied helped students nd interest in a profes-

sion and the language and vocabulary used for that profession. The language was used in

context and made more sense to the learners. Students ended up researching about a top-

ic they thought was interesting to them and they did it in Spanish.

One last aspect we would like to mention in this study is the importance of the use of

lms for teaching many aspects of culture. Amalia, Kusrini, and Ramadhani (2019) explain:

There are many reasons behind the use of lms in the teaching and learning activity. One of them is

that the rich content of lms introduces the learners to be exposed to a real-life situation and some-

times to the world of imagination. These audiovisual media lead the learners to use and optimize their

sight and hearing to grasp the information delivered by the lms. These two senses, sight, and hearing,

enable the learners to absorb the input more optimally. Another reason for using lms to teach English

is that lms oer opportunities for developing uency. (120)

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Chita Espino-Bravo

We agree with them, as students in our Advanced Spanish Conversation course were able

to acquire new language they had not used before, they were exposed to an issue, a dier-

ent culture, and dierent behaviors towards that issue. The lms used in this course would

certainly help improve the student’s uency in Spanish. They proved so in their debates

and presentations. Student’s presentation topics became more interesting and complex af-

ter the second lm was viewed, and their arguments to defend a point of view were bet-

ter supported at the end of the semester, than at the beginning of the semester. Students

did an excellent job in the nal presentations in this course. Amalia, Kusrini, and Ramad-

hani (2019) mention a post-viewing activity:

Stoller (1988) in Ruusunen (2011) highlights the importance of post-viewing activities. They are

meant to stimulate both written and oral use of the target language and information from the lm.

Post-viewing activities should extract the main ideas and issues of the lm since the small details of

the lm have been missed. Post-viewing activities are also essential to understand the main points of

the lm. (129)

For our Advanced Spanish Conversation course, a short quiz would be taken to make sure

students had watched the lm on their own. The quiz asked basic questions about the plot

of the lm and the main characters. Then they would have to prepare a debate with an

assigned topic in their group and connect it to the lm. The lms watched in the course

were the starting point of the debates and longer presentations student had to prepare

(Task-Based Activity). They provided a new cultural context, the main topic, specic vo-

cabulary, and linguistic structures related to the professions, and an approach to under-

stand the director’s view on the topic. Group presentations were used to make students

practice their oral skills at the low advanced-advanced level. Students found a presenta-

tion topic related to the lm and to Hispanic culture (topics were approved by the pro-

fessor), and prepared a presentation using the new vocabulary learned and the structures

they had been working on in class. All students improved their presentation grade a whole

letter with their nal presentation, that is, students with a B received an A, and students

with a low A received an A+. Most students felt they had really improved their language

skills in this course, and believed they could communicate ideas about any topic better in

Spanish after taking this course.

CONCLUSION

The learning outcomes of these courses were also thought carefully as we wanted campus

and online students in the advanced level of Spanish to improve all their language skills

(writing, listening, reading, and speaking). Students used new idiomatic expressions in

Spanish, they expressed themselves orally in Spanish with condence, they used new vo-

cabulary from business Spanish, medical Spanish, and translation from Spanish to English,

and they were precise when using that vocabulary. Students used specialized vocabulary

related to the topic being studied through the lm, they mastered complex grammatical

structures in Spanish, they discussed dierent controversial and current issues in the His-

panic world, they improved their listening comprehension in Spanish, and had better pro-

nunciation of Spanish, in general. Lastly, students were able to research dierent current

issues about the Hispanic world in Spanish, which helped improve their critical thinking

skills and connection of ideas. At the end of the course, students would be able to make

complex connections about any topic and they would do it in Spanish, using the specif-

ic vocabulary related to that topic. All student’s presentations improved throughout the

semester. It was our hope student made what they learned their own and would not for-

get the new linguistic structures and vocabulary and culture they learned. We agree with

Trace (2015) when he says:

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Language for specic purposes: using Hispanic lms and current Hispanic issues to teach specic vocabulary and context related to the professions online

Many of the authors expressed their hope that through

lsp

they could encourage and inspire their

students to continue learning language. Through a focus on needs and uses, LSP can act as a great

motivator for learners who might otherwise fee that learning a language is nothing more than a re-

quirement to be fullled and forgotten. We should never forget that language has value, and as teachers

we want to be able to instill this notion within our learners. We are only able to accomplish this when

we work towards creating environments that can provide our learners with the aordances to embrace

language as their own. (15-16)

It was interesting to note that some students learned a great deal about Hispanic culture,

dierent behaviors with respect to an issue, or how a particular Hispanic country would

behave towards an issue. Mallinger and Rossy explain: “To enhance teaching of cultural

concepts through the use of lm, students need a comprehensive, yet parsimonious, frame-

work to facilitate their understanding of the ways in which culture aects behavior” (3).

Their study was applied to another context where lm was used to appreciate ambiguity

and paradox associated with national and organizational cultures (3). They presented an

integrated framework for measuring culture used to illustrate cultural dimensions and is-

sues through lm case analysis. This exercise would enhance understanding of dierence

and would help students recognize the subtleties in dealing with complex cross-cultur-

al issues (2). We could well apply Mallinger and Rossy’s ideas to our Advanced Spanish

Conversation course. Through the lms we watched in our course, and the culture pre-

sented in the lms, students were able to learn about dierent behaviors with respect to

one same issue. They would learn diverse views on a specic controversial topic and could

compare them to the views of their own country and culture, which made the learning ex-

perience richer. Films would help better retain the new vocabulary and linguistic struc-

tures being learned.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I want to thank Dr. Diana Ruggiero for her input about Languages for Specic Purpos-

es, and specically, Spanish for Specic Purposes. I appreciate her expertise in teaching

Spanish for the Professions and all her knowledge about this topic. Without her help and

guide, this article would not have been written. I would also like to thank my mlng 618 va

online students who worked very hard on their course presentations and debates during

spring 2022.

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