THE IMPORTANCE OF LINGUISTIC VARIATION IN SPANISH IN A MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL WORLD

The political events of 9/11 have spurred the Modern Language Association (MLA) to propose an entirely new model of language learning and instruction, namely Translinguistic and Transcultural Competence (TTC). While such a curricular revision was also spearheaded by the military during WWII, it ultimately failed to develop linguistic and cultural competence in students. After placing the TTC in its historical context, it is argued that if the MLA's new proposal for language learning is to meet with greater success than those implemented after WWII, both instructors and students will need a linguistic understanding of regional and social variation as it exists in the Spanish language today (cf. Arteaga & Llorente 2009). Finally, this work concludes that such a focus will serve naturally as a bridge between lower division and upper division courses.