Beaver’s modern language department offers a unique class titled Spanish for Native Speakers. This course offers Spanish-speaking students the opportunity to study Spanish formally in an academic setting in the same way that native English-speaking students study English language arts. In this course students review grammar structures and develop academic vocabulary that will help them critically analyze a text, write essays, and acquire new information in different content areas.

One recent project centered around the following question: Is it ever possible to maintain complete objectivity when presenting information?

A small group of students worked together to rewrite and videotape a newscast of a story from one perspective or another. The story was purposely written with a slant (i.e., from the perspective of a documented immigrant vs. undocumented immigrant) and students were required to acknowledge that slant in their story. Students could also try to deliver the same newscast with a different slant attempting to tell the story from a completely objective, and solely fact-based perspective.

For anyone who speaks Spanish, here is one group’s finished product: