Spanish for the Professions: A Proposal for an Early Start that Includes Heritage Speakers

Educational institutions with world language requirements face increasing student demand to offer Spanish Language for Specific Purposes (SPSP) courses at lower proficiency levels to fulfill language requirements. Language for specific purposes courses are designed to fulfill the communicative needs of students within a specific professional context such as medicine, law, sciences, social work, business, translation and interpretation, among others (Sánchez-López 2013). The focus of these courses is on the integration of language related competencies through connections to other disciplines (Lafford 2012). These traits are very attractive to students who feel they will be able to use their second language in future professional domains. This short-form article discusses the proposal to start offering SPSP courses earlier, before students reach advanced proficiency, and in mixed classes where second language learners and heritage students sit together, to benefit from the specific content.

1. Implementing SPSP Courses at Lower Proficiency Levels

The field of World Languages for the Professions has seen growing development of SPSP courses, particularly in the last decade or so, with groundbreaking studies (e.g., Doyle 2012; Fryer 2012; King de Ramírez 2015; King de Ramírez and Lafford 2018; Long 2014, 2017; Sánchez-López 2014, 2017). These courses have been particularly useful in promoting the integration of language competencies via connections to other disciplines, and we have seen them spread to all the professions: medical and health care, social work, law, science, and technology (Doyle 2012). These days, more and more schools are including these courses in their program offerings. Nevertheless, there remains a need for development of methodology, curricula, pedagogy, and teaching materials to solidify this field (Doyle 2012). Long (2017) calls for the development of a general theoretical model. Other researchers call educators in the field to transform SPSP courses into modules within world language courses to develop transferable skills in demand by employers, such as critical thinking, adaptability, intercultural competence, and collaboration (King de Ramírez and Lafford 2018). These skills would allow the student to thrive in the workplace with adequate professional use of their second language. These proposals will allow the SPSP field to move forward and to train second language learners so they can interact with other individuals of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in the workplace. SPSP courses can also offer heritage bilinguals the possibility of expanding competencies in their heritage language, so they can manage professional contexts within their native culture more effectively (King de Ramírez and Lafford 2018).

With such sensible endeavors ahead, we (as educators) should ask ourselves if we could/should implement SPSP courses at beginning and intermediate language levels before students achieve advanced proficiency. We advocate here that practitioners do not need to wait until students reach an advanced level of proficiency in a target language to implement SPSP courses. Our proposal follows the premise from the Redefining Spanish Teaching and Learning Initiative (Pascual y Cabo and Prada 2018) that “it is important for each student to build bridges between Spanish as a subject and their other areas . . . Failing to do so obscures the student’s own perspective on the applicability of ‘language as a skill’ and reduces language learning to a body of content to be learned” (541). We advocate here that these courses can be and should be implemented earlier—at lower proficiency levels.

2. A Course for the Professions: Spanish for Business and Finance

With that objective in mind, we started offering SPN 2160 (Spanish for Business and Finance) at our institution. It is a course designed for students who have successfully completed two Spanish courses (Elementary Spanish I and II). This course provides learners with opportunities to improve their Spanish communication skills for business purposes. To be able to register, students must have completed the elementary Spanish prerequisites, or an equivalent course. It is open to any second language or heritage speaker who needs it to fit into their program of studies, making it a mixed course open to all students. Other courses in the program are closed to heritage speakers.

Students...