Domnita Dumitrescu

Gabriel García Márquez in Retrospect: A Collection ed. by Gene H. Bell-Villada

EDITORIAL POLICY: Hispania publishes reviews of selected books and electronic media in the following categories: Pan-Hispanic/Luso-Brazilian Literary and Cultural Studies; Linguistics, Language, and Media; and Fiction and Film. Publishers and authors should submit their materials for possible selection to the Book/Media Review Editor, Domnita Dumitrescu, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, California State University, Los Angeles, 5151 State University Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90032. Submitted materials will not be returned to publishers or authors, even if they are not selected for review. Members of the AATSP who wish to be considered as reviewers should upload their information at mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hispan and send their CV to the Book/Media Review Editor at ddumitrescu@aatsp.org. Hispania will not accept unsolicited reviews and does not publish journal numbers, book notices, or reviews of works more than two years old. Due to the number of works that correspond to Hispania’s broad scope, not all requests to review specific items can be granted. We especially encourage, however, requests to review film and other media resources. An invitation to review does not guarantee publication. All reviews are evaluated by anonymous readers and publication decisions are based upon their comments and the discretion of the editors.

Innovative Approaches to Teaching Spanish and Portuguese in the Twenty First Century, and More …

This year, the AATSP organized not one, but three sessions at the MLA convention that was held in Vancouver, Canada, between the 8th and the 11th of January. In addition to the regular (guaranteed) session to which the AATSP, as an allied organization, is entitled, the program selection committee approved a second (non-guaranteed) session, and a third one, in collaboration with the Division of Luso-Brazilian Language and Literature. The two first sessions had similar topics, in spite of a slight variation in title: “Meeting the Needs of the Global Economy: Mastering Spanish and Portuguese North of Rio Bravo,” and, respectively, “Teaching and Learning Spanish North of Rio Bravo: Innovative Approaches for the Twenty-First Century.” The idea was to invite scholars from both the United States and Canada (hence the “North of Rio Bravo” part in the session titles), to present innovative methodological approaches and cutting edge pedagogical techniques for teaching Spanish and Portuguese in this century, characterized by the rapid spread of technology to all domains of human activity and the globalization of society as a whole. The call for papers was received with enthusiasm, and there were initially more excellent proposals than were presented in the end, due to unforeseen circumstances that prevented some participants (among them, renowned scholars such as Bill VanPatten, from Michigan State University, and Ana Clotilde Thomé-Williams, from Northwestern University) to attend the convention. Nevertheless, the five papers that were read in those two sessions encompassed an exciting array of topics related to the teaching of Spanish and Portuguese from a wide variety of perspectives, keeping in mind the needs of the global economy and the fast changing field of language education in these “vulnerable times” for the humanities in general (cf. the Presidential Forum at the precedent MLA convention in Chicago). We all have heard arguments from critics of higher education about the need for the public universities and colleges (but not only) to become more “productive” and to better respond to the concrete demands of the society. Like many of their colleagues in the humanities, foreign language educators are constantly seeking to renew their methods, to increase their effectiveness, and to better prepare their students for the professions in which their language skills will be needed. Participants in these sessions shared their experience in this regard and discussed some innovative approaches to the teaching of these two major world languages, Spanish and Portuguese, the importance of which has increased exponentially in the United States, and, more recently, in Canada as well. For instance, Douglas A. Jackson and Shannon M. Polchow, both from the University of South Carolina Upstate, in their paper titled “‘You know Spanish, right?’: Language for Specific Purposes and the Challenge of Teaching Content Areas and Lexical Domain” demonstrated convincingly how this simple question is actually one of the hardest to answer without context,

El flojo matinal: Contribución al análisis del discurso oral en español de un grupo de méxico-americanos bilingües

Los datos que forman el punto de partida de este trabajo provienen de grabaciones hechas por los candidatos que se presentan cada trimestre al examen de proficiencia en espanol a fien de ser admitidos al programa para maestros bilingues de la Escuela de Educacion de California StateUniversity, Los Angeles. Concretamente, se consideran 43 grabaciones obtenidas en tres examenes sucesivos (febrero, abril y julio de 1991) de candidatos Mexico-americanos nacidos en California y que hablan regularmente espanol fuera del ambito estrictamente escolar (en realidad, la mayoria son bilingues desde la ninez, y consideran que dominan las dos lenguas en medida casi igual).