As part of our Master in Spanish program, we have organized a series of lectures during the Summer Session 2012. In addition to "Conversations with Manuel Longares", Dr. Ana Serradilla (Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) gave a lecture entitled "The Evolution of Gender in Spanish: Language and Society" in which she explained not only the history of feminine words in the Spanish language and their variation over the years, but she also clarified the close relationship that exists between language and ideology.

On July 12, Dr. Isabel Alonso Belmonte (Facultad de Formación de Profesorado y Educación, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) gave a lecture entitled, "Discourse-Pragmatic Competence in the Spanish as a Second Language Classroom" in which she explained the importance of teaching and learning a second language in order to understand how to act in different situations and cultural contexts. She also gave ideas to her audience on how to incorporate this important aspect of communicative competence into the classroom.