Spanish for Peace Corps Volunteers in Specialized Technical Jobs

Peace Corps. — 636 p.Ever since the Peace Corps started sending volunteers to Latin America, it has been faced with the problem of training people to speak Spanish. Because Peace Corps Volunteers would be working in a variety of fields, such as Agriculture, Construction and Adult Literacy, a need was felt for a special kind of language text. The purpose of such a text would be to train Volunteers to communicate in Spanish at a level of proficiency that would enable them to perform their specialized tasks effectively and expeditiously.The current text is the first attempt to achieve this goal. The text contains two major sections. The first is a series of units to be used by all students and designed to teach basic grammatical structures and vocabulary useful to all.These units contain such features as:practical conversations, drills and linguistic situations designed to have students communicate from the very start;
highly organized pattern drills designed to teach and reinforce basic language patterns;
cultural notes designed to familiarize students with certain aspects of Latin American culture;
Grammatical notes designed to answer certain language questions that students might ask.The second section deals with units that present no new grammatical structures
but that may be selected according to the technical needs of the Volunteer, and the country that he will be working in. Thus, there is a series of "technical" units designed to teach specialized vocabulary, along With a series of conversational units pertaining to the geography, culture and dialects of different Latin American countries.It is hoped that this book will prove to be of significant value not only to Peace Corps Volunteers but to anyone needing the special kind of Spanish that this book offers.