The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC houses a world-renowned collection of art, including paintings by Spanish artists such as Salvador Dalí, Francisco de Goya, Juan Gris, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán and more. The museum is accessible by Metro (Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter on the green and yellow lines) and admission is free of charge.
Be sure to pick up a gallery map in English and/or Spanish to help you navigate the collection. Audio tours are available for you on your mobile devices. If you prefer, docent-led guided tours in English are offered daily. All of these resources and more are free.
Free guided tours in Spanish are available the following dates and times:
West Building Tours
February 3, 8 at 12:00
West Building Rotunda
East Building Tours
February 3, 8 at 2:00
East Building Atrium
Spanish tour of American Art
January 26 at 12:00
February 23 at 12:00
West Building Rotunda
For more information visit https://www.nga.gov
Ace of Clubs and Four of Diamonds (1912)
by Juan Gris (1887-1927)
NOVA students have access to a new video streaming service! Be sure to check out Kanopy, which features numerous titles in a number of languages. To access Kanopy, visit http://nvcc.kanopystreaming.com/ At the top of the page you will see “Subjects.” Click there and choose “Global Studies and Languages” from the drop-down menu. Then, click “Latin American Studies” to browse Spanish-language films. Films from Spain can be found under “European and Baltic Studies.” Enjoy!
NOVA’s Alexandria Campus Library continues to build their collection of books in Spanish and other languages. To help you spot these titles on the shelves when you are browsing, the librarians have implemented a helpful new system. They have placed clear lime green labels over the call number of any book in a language other than English (at least 50%, so the labels are on bilingual books, too). It’s not limited to Spanish-language books, but once you are in the Spain and Latin American literature section, those books are much more noticeable.
Look for this system soon in the feature films section!
Is there a book or film that the library doesn’t have but should? Please see your recommendations to Prof. Martha Davis at email@example.com.
Looking for ways to keep up with your Spanish over the winter break? Here are some sites that will help you maintain your listening and reading skills until January:
News in Slow Spanish is a slowly read weekly newscast with transcript. Choose to hear peninsular or Latin American Spanish. Mouse over difficult words to see an English translation.
Radio Ambulante is a weekly podcast from npr.org that features stories from around Latin America and the U.S.
Notes in Spanish features audio and video conversations between husband and wife duo Marina and Ben, who discuss a range of issues suitable for all language levels. She is from Spain and he is from England.
Mi Vida Loca, the binge-watchable drama from BBC.com, is suitable for beginning level students. Watch the learning segments to review the grammar and vocabulary featured in each episode.
As final exams approach, we thought it would be a good time to share our favorite online resources for Spanish students. Remember to break up studying in small chunks of time. Cramming for a language exam does not work.
Barbara Nelson’s Spanish Language & Culture site is a must for students and professors alike. It not only has lots of grammar exercises, but songs and poems that will expose you to Spanish and Latin American culture. Need more? Visit http://www.bowdoin.edu/hispanic-studies/tools/newgr/ats/. For explanations about grammar, be sure to visit http://grammar.spanishintexas.org
For listening practice, you can’t go wrong with University of Texas at Austin’s Spanish proficiency exercises or SpinTX Video Archive, which maintain excellent collections of short video interviews for language learners of all levels.
Google Translate may work in a hurry, but why not use a Spanish-English dictionary to ensure you are using the correct word for what you are trying to express? WordReference will provide you with a list of definitions for the word you look up as well as its pronunciation. They even have an app! Choose to hear the audio in a Mexican, Argentinean or peninsular Spanish accent. Be sure to check out the language forum for explanations about word usage and other help from native speakers from around the Spanish-speaking world.
Are you looking for conversation practice? Consider getting a language partner through Mixxer
A low-tech option that never fails is good old-fashioned, homemade flashcards. Just making the flashcards helps to remember vocabulary and verb conjugations as you write them out. Then, rather than checking your phone during a short wait on the bus, before class starts or at an appointment, you can reach for your flashcards instead.
New Spanish Course for Spring 2018!
Intensive Beginning Spanish I
Course # 32944 (5 Credits)
Mondays & Wednesdays
9:30 a.m. – 12:05 p.m.
14-week course begins January 24
An intensive review of Spanish 101 and 102, this course is designed for students who have had some Spanish instruction or exposure to the language or speak another Romance language (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalán). Upon successful completion of the course students may take Intermediate Spanish I (SPA 201).
Contact Prof. Martha Davis
Priority course registration for Spring 2018 begins November 6. Open registration for all students starts November 13. Have you chosen your next Spanish class? The Spring 2018 course schedule is available here: http://www.nvcc.edu/schedule/crs2182/
Possible course sequences at NOVA are:
SPA 101, 102, 201, 202
SPA 115, 201, 202
SPA 205, 206 (206 may be taken prior to 205)
New to Spanish at NOVA? Not sure where to begin? A free placement test is available in the testing center in AA 156 to help you find the right course for you. Click here for testing center hours of operation: testing center hours
It is always a treat to have former NOVA students return to campus for a visit. Today Daniel Ruff, who studied Spanish at NOVA Alexandria and has a passion for language learning, stopped by to talk about his work as an ESL instructor. Over the summer he earned a Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Cambridge English Language Assessment.
The world is your oyster, Daniel. ¡Te deseamos lo mejor!
Looking for Spanish-language resources at NOVA? The Alexandria Library has a wide assortment of books and films to choose from. Here are some ways to access them:
- Browse the bookshelves for books. PQ6001-PQ8897, PC 4117 and PC4127 are where you will find literary works. PC4000-PC4961 is where you will find books about grammar and language.
- Browse the library catalog for books. Visit www.nvcc.edu/library and type “fiction” or “poetry” or “literature” or “short stories” or “drama” or “anthology” in the search box. Limit your results to books, by campus, by language (Spanish).
- Browse the library catalog for films. Visit www.nvcc.edu/library. Type “feature films” in the search box. Limit your results to multimedia, by campus and by language (Spanish).
- Watch streaming videos. Visit www.nvcc.edu/library and type “kanopy” in the catalog search box. Limit your results by language.
For more information about NOVA’s libraries, visit http://www.nvcc.edu/library/campus.html
The U.S. State Department funds summer scholarships for degree-seeking students who are U.S. citizens and want to study a language they deem “critical” to national security. These include Hindi, Swahili, Urdu and others. No prior experience with these languages is needed. They are looking for students who demonstrate a passion for learning about the language and its culture and are willing to travel overseas to do so. (Please note: Students who wish to study Arabic and Persian need one prior year of language study and those who want to study Chinese, Japanese and Russian must have completed two years.)
These scholarships fully fund your summer study abroad.
There will be an information session about the scholarship on Monday, October 16 at 2 p.m. at the Alexandria Campus in Bisdorf Room 260. The deadline for Summer 2018 applications is November 15.
For more information visit www.clscholarship.org. Questions? Send an email to firstname.lastname@example.org or call 202.833.7522.