Spanish 101: Beginning Spanish I

Course Description

This is an introductory course in Spanish for beginners and students with less than two years of high school Spanish. The emphasis of this course is on the basic language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

This course is for beginners with little or no prior experience with the Spanish language. If you have taken previous high school or college courses in Spanish, or if you have advanced language skills in Spanish, you should not take this course. Rather, you should either test out of SPAN 101 or sign up for a more advanced Spanish course. During the first week of class, the instructor will determine if you are correctly placed in this course. If the instructor determines that you have advanced Spanish language skills, expect a conversation about whether this class is the best placement for you.

Course Objectives

1. Display a developing knowledge of basic Spanish grammar.
2. Begin to hear and understand instructions relating to course assignments, classroom activities and begin to respond to questions directed to them.
3. Begin to develop reading comprehension and pronunciation skills needed to continue their study of the language.
4. Begin to show the ability to compose short expressions using the grammar and vocabulary they are learning.

Course Schedule

The course has been designed to follow a weekly schedule in which students complete one lesson per week. You are expected to complete all of the learning activities in the order they are listed for each week. The instructor may shift the order of completion for some assignments and may even extend the deadlines on a few assignments if circumstances warrant it for the entire class. However, for most assignments and quizzes, you are expected to have them all completed by Saturday evening at 11:59 p.m. (mountain time) each week. Please refer to your Calendar in I-Learn for the specific times and dates for your time zone. 

In order to help you plan out your weekly schedule, every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. (mountain time) you will be given access to the learning activities for the next week. This is done so that you will be able to work ahead over the weekend if you choose to do so.

On average, it takes approximately 12 hours to complete all of the learning activities for each week. This is the average amount of time students must put into the course each week in order to get an average grade (C) in the course. Students who wish to earn higher grades may need to put in more study time. You should arrange your daily schedule so that you can put in about two hours of study every day from Monday through Saturday. This will ensure that you are able to put in the amount of distributed practice that is necessary to gain fluency in the language. 

With these classes, there is no time off for holidays like you might get in face-to-face classes. Consequently, you should make sure to arrange your study schedule so that holiday activities do not keep you from completing the learning activities.

Weekly Schedule

In order to help you plan out your weekly schedule, every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. (mountain time) you will be given access to the learning activities for the next week. This is done so that you will be able to work ahead over the weekend if you choose to do so.

On average, it takes approximately 12 hours to complete all the learning activities for each week. This is the average amount of time students must put into the course each week in order to get an average grade (C) in the course. Students that wish to earn higher grades may need to put in more study time. You should arrange your daily schedule so that you can put in about two hours of study every day from Monday through Saturday. This will ensure that you are able to put in the amount of distributed practice that is necessary to gain fluency in the language.

With these classes, there is no time off for holidays like you might get in face-to-face classes. Consequently, you should make sure to arrange your study schedule so that holiday activities do not keep you from completing the learning activities.

*Please refer to your Calendar in I-Learn for dates and times specific to your time zone for each activity.

Required Materials

This course uses a low-cost, auto-access textbook. Read the information in the Textbook Information module to learn how to access your textbook.

IMPORTANT: This course requires McGraw-Hill Connect access to complete the activity and assignments. Please do not opt out of materials for this course. It is necessary for the integration to properly work in the course.

McGraw-Hill Account

This course uses McGraw-Hill Connect activities. If you have not previously created one for a BYU-Idaho course, you are required to create a McGraw-Hill account. Instructions, found on the About Your Textbook page, guide you to complete the necessary steps for setup.

Conversation Lab Attendance

This course is designed around the premise that your language ability will become better through conversation. The more faithfully you attend the conversation labs with others, the more you will get out of the course. Therefore, you will be required to do the following:

• Attend two synchronous conversation lab sessions each week. The sessions will be 40 minutes long, and attendance is strictly required as it weighs 30% of your final grade.
• In order to accommodate students' busy schedules, the instructor will provide several different sessions for you to choose from; however, once you have signed up for a session, we ask that you attempt to attend the same day and time every week to help build relationships and connections.
• The instructor or the TA will direct all of the activities throughout each session.

Because the conversation labs are one of the most important and engaging parts of this course, students may attend a meeting other than with their primary instructor or TA (Spanish 101 courses share TAs across all sections, so a variety of TAs leads the conversation labs). There are several sections this semester, and instructors will try to set their schedules and meeting times to best accommodate the most students. The schedule is not available until the middle of the first week of the semester after we arrange the schedule with all of the TAs. Students aren’t required to sign up—some instructors have them comment on a post, but it is not required.

It is your responsibility to come prepared for each conversation lab. Because the sessions involve all group members interacting with one another, it is crucial that you come to each session prepared to teach one another. If it is obvious to the TA or the instructor that you have not completed the learning activities in Connect, you may lose participation points in the lab session.

Missing your conversation lab sessions will have serious consequences on your grade! Please make sure you work out your daily and weekly schedule so that you will be able to attend all of your lab sessions.

Unique Requirements

This course does use proctored exams. You will need to install Proctorio on your computer when required to take a proctored exam. The exams will be within McGraw Connect. If you have any problems with the test, please contact the number that you are provided within McGraw Connect to get immediate help with the exam working properly if needed.

Grading Policies

Grading Scale

Grades will be based on a percentage of the total number of points students may earn from assignments and quizzes, participation in online class meetings, and completion of any other learning activities assigned by the instructor. Grades will be determined as follows:

Students may check their scores on some tests by using the Grades link on the Navigation Menu. Other scores will be shown in the online Connect eBook. In addition, the instructor may record participation points for the conversation lab sessions. If you have any questions about any scores on your assignments or about your overall grade, you may check with your instructor. 

University Policies

Academic Honesty

You are expected to observe the Academic Honesty Policy by doing your own work and refusing to plagiarize or use translation software or websites to complete your assignments. Any violation of the University’s Academic Honesty Policy may result in a failing grade for the affected assignment or a failing grade in the course. In addition, instructors will report all academic honesty violations to the Student Honor Office.

AI and Academic Integrity 

Students should not use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist with writing unless they have permission and guidance from an instructor. AI tools include Chat GPT, Bard, CopyAI, Writesonic, Jasper AI, Anyword, GrammarlyGo, and many others. Some teachers may ask students to use AI for specific purposes, but if not, students should assume that they must ask for permission in order to use AI tools or simply not use AI at all. If students aren’t sure of an instructor’s policies, they should ask for clarification. 

 Dishonest uses

• Giving the AI a prompt and submitting what it writes (even just one sentence) as your own work. 
• Combining content from several different AI prompts and submitting as your own work. 

Ask your professor about these uses

• Using AI to generate ideas for a paper.
• Using AI to translate material into either English or Spanish.
• Using AI to learn new words.
• Using AI to write a sample paper or paragraph and then modeling your own work after the work of the AI bot.

Personal Challenges

Other University Policies

Student Honor and Other Policies

Please read through the document called University Policies. It gives important information on topics including the following:

• Student Honor
  • Academic Honesty
  • Student Conduct
    • Sexual Harassment
• Student with Disabilities
• Complaints and Grievances
• Copyright Notice

Go to the Student Resources module to review further resources and information.