Spanish 001 is designed for the student with little or no prior knowledge of the language. The course emphasizes all four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In order to learn all of these skills in the online environment, we will use a variety of tools including a discussion board, a video upload and commenting platform (Flipgrid), a videoconferencing platform (MS Teams), video tutorials provided by the instructor, and quizzes and an exam through Blackboard. All the tools used will be free for students except for the textbook. The final exam will require the remote proctoring service Respondus (browser and monitor), which will be free for students who register for this course. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to use their newly acquired skills in order to communicate in Spanish in a realistic and culturally appropriate manner. This class will be taught mainly in Spanish.

The course will be mostly asynchronous but in order to learn to speak spontaneously, students will have partner chats with each other which they can arrange at mutually convenient times. They will also have seven one-hour synchronous virtual class sessions, but these will be offered at different times of day to ensure flexibility for students with different schedules.