Spanish Archive

Teaching Romance Languages through Intercomprehension: Networking Hearts and Minds in the Language Classroom by Clorinda Donato, California State University This presentation will discuss how the strategies of Romance Language Intercomprehension are being adapted to the North American context to teach French and Italian to Spanish speakers at California State University, Long Beach. Topics to be…

This presentation describes a semester-length sequence of lessons structured around closely-watched film clips for fourth-semester Spanish. Based on the implementation of these lessons this semester, and of an analogous application in Italian 4, straightforward guidelines will be presented for the design of sequences of lessons that guide students from a passive to a critical and…

Communicating Gramatically: Evaluating a Learner Strategies Website for Spanish Grammar by Andrew D. Cohen, Professor, Program in Second Language Studies, University of Minnesota, presented the first of the BLC’s Spring 2010 Lecture Series, “Communicating Gramatically: Evaluating a Learner Strategies Website for Spanish Grammar,” an introduction to the Spanish Grammar Strategies website. The site is part…

1. Introduction Blogs written in Spanish are a particularly rich source of contextualized language in use—they are freely available, universally accessible, widely varied, highly interactive, and generally appealing to students. However, some of the same qualities that make blogs attractive for use in a Spanish class also present challenges, especially with regard to their use…

Prior research indicates that providing language learners with opportunities to interact with one another through online communication tools can promote positive outcomes such as increased motivation, diversified participation, and improved oral production (Lamy & Hampel, 2007). However, with the exception of Blake’s (2000) suggestion that jigsaw activities are especially effective for promoting negotiation of meaning…

This article reports on a classroom-based experience that draws from the critical approach to heritage Spanish language teaching and Hanauer’s concept of meaningful writing...

Different languages inherently present different thinking for speaking patterns, targeting different meaning components for expression. Previous research has demonstrated that second language learners largely tend to transfer ...

Focusing on Spanish in California, this article offers language educators a critical perspective into how the languages we teach have histories constructed in shifting memories of language,speakership, and education. This article builds upon the 2007 MLA report’s vision for curricular reform that situates language study in ...

This study centers on a pilot project conducted at a research university to develop a democratic team teaching model for beginning language classes. The goals of the project were to design a solid model for delivery of the daily class material by two different instructors and to measure ...

Foreign language teachers are often migrants. They have traveled and lived in other countries either to learn or to teach a language. In 2005, Domna Stanton characterized language teaching as a cosmopolitan act-- “a complex encounter made in a sympathetic effort to see the world as [others] see it and, as a consequence, to denaturalize our own views” (629). Do foreign language teachers ...