Metas: Spanish in Review, Moving Toward Fluency

Metas is an exciting new version of the best-selling intermediate Spanish textbook Punto y aparte, created in response to requests from reviewers for a version of Punto y aparte with enough material to be used over the entire second year. Metas achieves this goal by essentially doubling the amount of material in each of the six main chapters of Punto y aparte (originally designed as a fourth-semester book), and then by dividing each of these expanded chapters (now called Unidades in Metas) into two self-contained sections (Capítulo A and Capítulo B) to make the amount of material more manageable. Thus, Metas offers the same 12-unit structure found in most intermediate Spanish textbooks (6 units x 2 chapters each = 12 manageable chapters).

In terms of grammar, Metas focuses on key grammatical structures (los puntos clave) critical to the seven communicative functions or goals (las siete metas comunicativas) that are central to intermediate-level study. The seven communicative functions are:

1. Description (Descripción)
2. Comparison (Comparación)
3. Reactions and recommendations (Reacciones y recomendaciones)
4. Narrating in the past (Narración en el pasado)
5. Talking about preferences (Hablar de los gustos)
6. Hypothesizing (Hacer hipótesis)
7. Talking about the future (Hablar del futuro)

By organizing the text around key grammatical structures, Metas retains the framework of Punto y aparte, resulting in a logical and manageable progression. Additionally, the continual reinforcement and recycling of all seven communicative functions offer students many opportunities to communicate, produce, and create with the language, rather than to simply review the scope and sequence of Spanish grammar of their first-year course.

Sharon Wilson Foerster retired from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001, where she had been the Coordinator of Lower-Division Courses in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, directing the first- and second-year Spanish language program and training graduate assistant instructors. She continues to teach in the Spanish Summer Language School at Middlebury College in Vermont. She received her Ph.D. in Intercultural Communications from the University of Texas in 1981. Before joining the faculty at the University of Texas, she was Director of the Center for Cross-Cultural Study in Seville, Spain, for four years. She continues her involvement in study abroad through her work as Director of the Spanish Teaching Institute and as Academic Advisor for Academic Programs International. She is the co-author of the following McGraw-Hill titles: Pasaporte: Spanish for High Beginners (2009); Supplementary Materials to accompany Puntos de partida, Eighth Edition (2009); Metas: Spanish in Review, Moving Toward Fluency (2008); Punto y aparte: Spanish in Review, Moving Toward Fluency, Third Edition (2007); Lecturas literarias: Moving Toward Linguistic and Cultural Fluency Through Literature (2007); Metas comunicativas para maestros (1999); and Metas comunicativas para negocios (1998).

Anne Lambright is Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literature in the Hispanic Studies Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She earned her Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching focus is on contemporary Latin American Literature, Andean literature, indigenismo, and Latin American women’s writing, topics on which she has published several articles and books. She is the author of Creating the Hybrid Intellectual: Subject, Space, and the Feminine in the Narrative of José María Arguedas and co-author of Unfolding the City: Women Write the City in Latin America (2007), with Elisabeth Guerrero. In addition, she is the co-author of Metas: Spanish in Review, Moving Toward Fluency (2008).