A place for professors of Spanish Literature to complain about or defend the field.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Quixote in translation
Any of you guys ever taught, or considered teaching, DQ in English? I've been so infected by the "target language" virus of our department culture that I feel sort of dirty and cheap just considering it.
I once taught a bilingual summer course on DQ. It was cross-listed with an English lit class, thus I had English and Spanish majors in the same class. The English majors read the book in English and the Spanish majors also did so in English, with encouragement from me to also read it the original language (and many of them did). Lectures were in English. The class was easily "segregated" into two linguistic groups for purposes of having group discussions, such that the Spanish majors communicated with each other in Spanish, the others in English. All handouts were in two langauges, as were exams, etc. The Spanish majors had to write everything in Spanish. It worked out quite well.
3 comments:
I have never done it, but I think it would be a good way to attract people to the major (you could use that to sell it to your department).
My English colleagues teach parts of it in English. I used Lathrop's edition, helpful, but still intimidating for undergraduates.
I once taught a bilingual summer course on DQ. It was cross-listed with an English lit class, thus I had English and Spanish majors in the same class. The English majors read the book in English and the Spanish majors also did so in English, with encouragement from me to also read it the original language (and many of them did). Lectures were in English. The class was easily "segregated" into two linguistic groups for purposes of having group discussions, such that the Spanish majors communicated with each other in Spanish, the others in English. All handouts were in two langauges, as were exams, etc. The Spanish majors had to write everything in Spanish. It worked out quite well.
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