Spanish Archive

Results in BLC Posts

Graphic Novels in Foreign Language Learning

Over the past decades the graphic novel has witnessed both increased popularity among readers as well as cultural and intellectual prestige among critics and academics alike – but what is its place within the foreign language classroom? Through a case study of first-year Spanish instruction, this presentation will address strategies for how language instructors can…

Historias de Indocumentados (Stories of the Undocumented)

Spanish Lecturer Amelia Barili is known for her innovative work in integrating language study with community involvement. One of Barili's recent projects is an anthology of stories of the undocumented, written in Spanish and translated into English by students in Barili's course Biographical and Autobiographical Writing: Telling the Stories of the Undocumented. A news story…

Memoria histórica: A Film Module for Intermediate Spanish

The purpose of this project was to develop pedagogical material for a film module on historical memory in Intermediate Spanish, as part of a larger departmental goal of increasing the presence and effectiveness of cinematic resources in our literacy-based curriculum. This presentation will describe the development, piloting, and evaluation of a unit on historical memory…

Results in L2 Journal Articles

Marginalization of Local Varieties in the L2 Classroom: The Case of U.S. Spanish

The United States is one of the world’s most populous Hispanophone countries, with over 35 million Spanish-speakers. In addition, Spanish is the most widely taught foreign language in the United States, with more students enrolled in Spanish at the higher-education level than in all other modern languages combined. How, then, is the United States’ status as a top Spanish-speaking country reflected in the treatment of sociolinguistic variation in Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) curricula at the university level? This case study of a large, public university in the Southwest, which is home to an SFL program among the largest in the country, explores that question using a two-tiered approach. First, an analysis is conducted to examine ...

Business Spanish in the Real World: A Task-Based Needs Analysis

The growing demand for Spanish for Specific Purposes (SSP) courses at universities in the United States in the last two decades (Klee, 2015) has brought to light the need for more theoretically driven research in this field, which can inform pedagogical decisions and materials design. The present study conceptually replicates Serafini and Torres (2015), adopting a Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) approach to instructional design, and it aims to contribute to the under-researched field of SPP by ...

An Activity Theoretical Approach to Social Interaction During Study Abroad

This case study examines the orientation to social interaction by one study abroad student who spent a semester in Spain. Using an activity theoretical approach, the findings indicate that the student did not only view social interaction with his Spanish host family and a expert-Spanish-speaking age peer as an opportunity for second language (L2) learning, but also had other goals for the interactions such as relationship building and enjoyment. The analysis further highlights ...

“Got Llorona?”: Teaching for the Development of Symbolic Competence.

Cultural and literary texts are used in the foreign language classroom to support learners’ language development, cultural awareness, and reading comprehension. While classroom activities frequently facilitate a literal understanding of facts and events, these texts offer another potential level of analysis: symbolic dimensions, which focus on ...

Spanish for You: Student-Centered and Languages for Specific Purposes Methods in Lower-Division Spanish

This article investigates a project that used student-centered teaching and languages for specific purposes to increase university students’ motivation to study Spanish and willingness to communicate. After reflecting on their personal goals and interests, students were required to choose a purpose or context in which they might use Spanish in their future. Then students were encouraged to seek opportunities to foster their own language and culture learning related to the unique purposes that each student had selected. Data sources included ...

Collaborative Textbook Selection: A Case Study Leading to Practical and Theoretical Considerations

This case study developed a collaborative approach to the selection of a Spanish language textbook. The collaborative process consisted of six steps, detailed in this article: team building, generating evaluation criteria, formulating a meaningful rubric, selecting prospective textbooks, calculating rubric results, and reflectively reviewing results...

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