Undergraduate

Viento en popa: upper intermediate Spanish

On this page

• Summary
• Course content
• Entry
• Qualifications
• If you have a disability or additional requirement
• Course materials
• Teaching and assessment
• Professional recognition
• Students also studied
• Future availability
• How to register

Register for the course

This course is available for study in the countries shown. Fees may vary by country.

Summary

Viento en popa builds on the course En rumbo: intermediate Spanish (L140), or equivalent knowledge. The first course in our Diploma in Spanish, it will continue to develop your practical language skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing. By studying a variety of authentic audio, video and printed materials from Spain and Latin America, you will learn how to communicate in situations ranging from everyday conversation to putting forward your point of view in a debate. You will also have the opportunity to work on grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary acquisition. The compulsory residential school takes place in Spain.

Course content

Viento en popa: upper intermediate Spanish (previously titled Viento en popa: moving on in Spanish) further extends your language competence as well as enhancing your cultural knowledge and developing key skills necessary for studying at a higher level The themes of the course cover different aspects of life in Spanish-speaking countries today. You will be working with print-based materials as well as practising listening and speaking with an interactive DVD-ROM which features video footage and audio interviews. A range of online activities on the course website gives you access to further authentic materials from Spanish-speaking countries and fosters your ICT and communication skills. The themes covered in the course are:

• Educación y cultura ( education and culture)
• Historia y leyendas (history)
• Trabajo y sociedad (the workplace)
• Tradiciones y creencias (traditions and beliefs)
• Vida urbana (urban living)
• Recuerdos y utopías (past, present and future)

The course is lively and varied, with a wide range of mixed-media material that has been selected in order to build up your confidence in the different language skills. The structure of the materials allows you to evaluate your progress regularly and provides confidence-building strategies to improve your learning skills. The materials are interactive and encourage your participation.

Residential school

To pass the course you must satisfactorily participate in a one-week residential school in August, offered in Spain. The school provides a wide range of valuable learning opportunities designed to enhance and develop the skills covered in the course. The cost of the school (excluding travel costs) is included in the course fee.

Because the school is an essential part of the teaching and learning, excusal from it is not permitted. If you cannot attend, an alternative learning experience (ALE) will be offered. The ALE is provided online using a computer-based conferencing system which allows you to speak with your tutor and fellow students in real time over the internet and runs over a series of evenings and / or weekends in September. The ALE cannot provide the breadth of learning opportunities covered at the school in Spain and increases your workload at a busy period when you will be preparing your final TMAs and revising for the examination. For this reason attendance at the residential school is the preferred route for all students.

In order to successfully complete the course you will have to participate satisfactorily in either the residential school or the ALE.

Entry

This is a Level 2 course for students who have successfully completed En rumbo: intermediate Spanish (L140) or who already have an equivalent knowledge of Spanish. If you have not studied a language with the OU before or you have any doubt about the standard of your Spanish, you are strongly advised to ask your regional or national centre about looking at reference copies of the courses. If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.

The outcome of this course is of a level comparable to B2 as defined by the Council of Europe. See Common European Framework of Reference for Languages for further details.

Preparatory work

If you have time before the course begins, we suggest that you continue to use your Spanish in any way you can: by redoing some of the activities in L140, for example, or by watching and listening to the audio and video materials. You might be able to pick up Spanish radio broadcasts, or to borrow Spanish books and films from the local library. Perhaps you could get a Spanish newspaper. Anything you can do to keep practising your Spanish will be helpful. If you are new to the OU, it would be useful to look at some of the L140 materials and work through them. Materials are either available to buy from the Open University Worldwide website or available for viewing at your regional or national centre.

You might also want to consider buying Success with Languages (Hurd, S and Murphy, L (eds), Routledge, £13.99), a study guide in English that provides an ideal support for all aspects of your language learning. It covers a variety of topics including becoming an effective learner, developing competence in language skills, using resources, dealing with assessment, learning to reflect on your learning and evaluate your own progress, and making the most of the support available.  Each chapter contains a number of practical tasks designed to help you think about the way you learn and how you might improve it.

Qualifications

L204 is a compulsory course in our

• Diploma in Spanish (D40)
• BA (Honours) Humanities (B03) (with Spanish)
• BA (Honours) Business Studies (B04) (with Spanish)
• BA (Honours) Modern Language Studies (B30)

L204 is an optional course in our

• BA/BSc (Honours) European Studies (B10)
• BA (Honours) Humanities (B03)
• BA/BSc (Honours) International Studies (B11)

It can also count towards most of our other degrees at bachelors level, where it is suitable for a BA. We advise you to refer to the relevant qualification descriptions for information on the circumstances in which this course can count towards these qualifications because from time to time the structure and requirements may change.

Excluded combinations

Sometimes you will not be able to count a course towards a qualification if you have already taken another course with similar content.  To check any excluded combinations relating to this course, visit our excluded combination finder or check with our Student Registration & Enquiry Service before registering.

If you have a disability or additional requirement

Please note that this course makes substantial use of audio and visual materials. The written and spoken elements you will be asked to complete as part of your assessment use audio and possibly visual stimuli. Full transcripts of audio and video materials are provided, except those used for assessment purposes. The course materials are available in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Components may not be available or fully accessible using a screen reader and mathematical, scientific, and foreign language materials may be particularly difficult to read in this way. Large print or comb-bound versions of the written course materials can be provided on request. After you have registered you will receive detailed information about the residential-school site and the facilities available to help with the academic programme.  Our Services for disabled students website has the latest information about availability. You are advised to discuss your individual requirements with a regional adviser before you register.

You’ll need to make extensive use of a PC and will need to access the course website on a regular basis. You will also be offered tutorials, some of which will be via an online conferencing system.  If you are a new student, or new to courses using a computer or the internet, you will need to inform us of your particular needs as soon as possible, as some of our support services may take several weeks to arrange. Details of how to do this and our range of support services are described in our booklets Meeting your needs and Meeting your residential school needs, which you can download or request from our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.

You can also find information about accessible course materials, financial support and the Disabled Students' Allowance, equipment and other services, on our Services for disabled students website. It also includes our contact details for advice and support both before you register and while you are studying.

Course materials

What's included

Course books, other printed materials, DVD-ROMs, and a dedicated course website with access to a range of electronic tools including real-time conferencing and asynchronous tools such as forums.

You will need

You will need a headset with a microphone and earphones to take part in online tutorials, record spoken TMAs, complete speaking activities and take part in your end-of-course Speaking Test.

Please also check the Assessment section.

In addition to the set books below, you will need a monolingual dictionary such as either Diccionario Esencial de la Lengua Española , ISBN 9788467023145, £37.50, or Diccionario Salamanca de la lengua española, ISBN 9788493453749, £49.50.

Computing requirements

This course includes online computer activities – you can access these using a web browser that can play Flash and Shockwave. Some of your course software will be provided on disk.

You will need internet access and a computer. If you have purchased a new Windows computer since 2002 it should meet your course computing requirements. Check our Technical Requirements section if your computer is older than this or is otherwise unusual. Please note that you cannot use an Apple Mac or Linux computer unless it is running windows Boot Camp or similar.

Teaching and assessment

Support from your tutor

You will have a tutor who will help you with the course material and mark and comment on your written and spoken work. You can also ask your tutor for advice and guidance. This course usually includes some face-to-face tutorials, a number of online tutorials, and an electronic written forum. Please note that depending on where you live, the mix will vary and in some places face-to-face tuition may be replaced by telephone conferencing. Although you are not obliged to attend any of these, you are strongly encouraged to take part as they will provide you with plenty of opportunities to speak and listen to Spanish. The online tutorials will give you practice in using the conferencing tool needed for your end-of-course Speaking Test. How tutorials are held will depend on the distribution of students taking the course in your area. Contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service if you want to know more about study with The Open University before you register.

Assessment

The assessment details for this course can be found in the facts box above.

You can choose whether to submit your tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) by post or online through the eTMA system. You may want to use the eTMA system for some of your assignments but submit by post for others. This is entirely your choice.

If you wish to submit your TMAs by post, please ensure you have an audio cassette recorder (full size, not mini format) with microphone and at least one blank cassette.

The TMAs test your written or spoken skills. The listening input for these will be provided as downloadable sound files on the course website. There will be a Writing Test and a Speaking Test at the end of the course. The Writing Test takes the format of a three hour examination at a standard examination centre. You may have to travel some distance to the examination centre. The Speaking Test takes place at a compulsory online assessment session.

Professional recognition

The Chartered Institute of Marketing now recognises this course under their Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme.

Students also studied

Students who studied this course also studied at some time:

• A buen puerto: advanced Spanish (L314)
• En rumbo: intermediate Spanish (L140)
• Portales: beginners' Spanish (L194)
• Exploring the English language (U211)
• Envol: upper intermediate French (L211)

Future availability

The details given here are for the course that starts in February 2011. We expect it to be available at the same time once a year.

How to register

To register a place on this course return to the top of the page and use the Click to register button. For more information and advice about registration see OU Study Explained.

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Student Reviews

I thoroughly enjoyed the course - the content was interesting and the residential school was very helpful. I am now ...
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I am so glad I studied Viento en Popa. When a new OU course is delivered, it's like Christmas. A ...
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