Spring 2027

Lying, Swearing, and Breaking the Rules: an Introduction to the Linguistic Study of Spanish

Introduction to linguistic study of Spanish using real-world examples like blogs, corpora, and film to examine variation across regions, speakers, and contexts.

offering recorded3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Grant Armstrong3.7/5

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Fernando Tejedo-Herrero

The course was described as super fast-paced and really difficult to manage, with a heavy focus on practice problems and questions.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Demonstrate understanding of linguistic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and stylistic features of written and spoken Spanish, understand how they influence meaning, and apply these features in level-appropriate ways in writing and speech.

  • Demonstrate awareness of the social, cultural, and linguistic diversity that characterizes the Spanish-speaking world.

  • Apply basic methods of linguistic analysis to understand the structure and communicative intent of various written and oral Spanish texts.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

SPANISH 226 or concurrent enrollment, or SPANISH 311 or concurrent enrollment

SPANISH 225 used by

“Used by” includes alternatives; linked courses may have other requirements. This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree

Professors

Spring 2027
Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 3.79/5 from 24 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2024: 3.58 GPA, 75.6% A/AB (n=78 letter grades); Spring 2025: 3.51 GPA, 69.6% A/AB (n=79 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.60 GPA, 86.2% A/AB (n=87 letter grades).

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

CATHERINE STAFFORD is recorded teaching in Spring 2020, Fall 2023, Fall 2025. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

FERNANDO TEJEDO-HERRERO is recorded teaching in Fall 2022. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

GRANT ARMSTRONG is recorded teaching in Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Spring 2026. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 1200
DIS 301Classroom Instruction0 / 300
DIS 302Classroom Instruction0 / 300
DIS 303Classroom Instruction0 / 300
DIS 304Classroom Instruction0 / 300

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Fernando Tejedo-Herrero

Students found the course fast-paced and difficult to manage, with the first few weeks being the hardest period to lock in.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.51 GPA, 69.6% A/AB (n=79 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.21 GPA, 53.9% A/AB (n=89 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.60 GPA, 86.2% A/AB (n=87 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Fernando Tejedo-Herrero

The course was described as super fast-paced and really difficult to manage, with a heavy focus on practice problems and questions.

Past student reviews · Fernando Tejedo-Herrero

Lectures were engaging and energetic, but posted slides were best understood only while present in class, making independent review challenging.

Topics

  • Language deployment in contexts of social taboos, humor, politeness, persuasion, and identity negotiation.
  • Phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language ideologies, and language variation and change.
  • Real-world Spanish use through blogs, vlogs, language corpora, press, film, and recorded conversations.

Skills

  • Foundational understanding of phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language ideologies, and language variation and change.
  • Applying linguistic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and stylistic features of written and spoken Spanish in writing and speech.
  • Awareness of social, cultural, and linguistic diversity in the Spanish-speaking world.
  • Applying basic methods of linguistic analysis to understand structure and communicative intent of Spanish texts.

Grades

Historical instructor

Spring 2027 · Projected

Before grades are released

– average GPA

Approximate 80% prediction interval

About this estimate

The course’s semester-average GPA, not an individual student’s grade. The center uses 5 same-season terms, weighted toward recent results.

The range uses the finite-sample 80th-percentile rank of absolute errors from earlier same-season forecasts. Each forecast uses only records from earlier terms. At least four forecasts are required; bounds are rounded outward and limited to 0–4. This is an empirical estimate: changing instructors or grading policies can reduce its coverage.

4 earlier forecasts · 0.08 GPA average error.

Grades over time

Through Spring 2027

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

Download part 1
Selected offering source records
SPANISH 225 · Spring 2027

Lying, Swearing, and Breaking the Rules: An Introduction to the Linguistic Study of Spanish

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:912:025286",
    "course_id": "SPANISH 225",
    "course_uid": "course_ee1436d211bedc067d4c6f8b",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "025286",
    "source_subject_id": "912",
    "title": "Lying, Swearing, and Breaking the Rules: An Introduction to the Linguistic Study of Spanish",
    "credits_min": 3,
    "credits_max": 3,
    "typically_offered": "Not Applicable"
  }
]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
Download part 1
Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "8582aefb448b779823b7a273b358e7188a8c3e38f01ac7abac17fc5c1d3ee54f",
  "requirements_status": "needs_review",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}