Teaching First-Year Spanish On-Line

Abstract

This article provides a framework and outline for teaching a foreign language course entirely on-line to college undergraduates. The course uses a distance learning approach that incorporates an electronic messaging system, multimedia, World Wide Web, and Internet assignments. Course structure, pedagogical issues, and one university's experience with on-line courses are discussed as a basis for presenting a working model for teaching foreign languages using on-line technology. Finally, student learning outcomes in on-line and traditional first-year Spanish courses are compared.

Teachers' attitudes towards Computer-Assisted Language Learning in Australia and Spain

“…Teachers can monitor if students are completing the exercises and when, and she thinks that they are a good tool. These opinions on motivation are in line with the conclusions reached by Adair-Hauck et al (1999), Cahill and Catanzaro (1997), Lee (1998), and Soo and Ngeow (1998), and more recently by O'Dowd (2010). However, according to the experience of our informants, the success depends more on the type of student than on the method they use to learn the language.…”

“…Some studies carried out in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Barrutia (1964and 1970), or Gilman (1969, already showed a tendency to study the effectiveness of a certain CALL application in language teaching. This was also one of the main foci in the 1990s and in more recent years, as we can see in Blake (2000), Cahill and Catanzaro (1997), Chun (1994), Chun and Plass (1996), Davis and Lyman-Hager (1997), Derwing, Munro, and Carbonaro (2000), clac 57/2014, 3-44 bilbatua and herrero de haro: attitudes 9 González-Edfelt (1990), González-Bueno (2000), Grace (2000Grace ( ), kasper (2000, Lam (2000), Nagata (1996Nagata ( , 1997Nagata ( , 1998Nagata ( , 1999, Osuna (2000), and Van Handle and Corl (1999), and more recently, in Aydin and Genç (2011), in Heift and Schulze (2012: 28), and Wang and Vásquez (2012).…”

The Messy Task of Evaluating Proficiency in Online Language Courses

“…While small‐scale studies comparing discrete CMC or vocabulary treatments abound in the literature, very few comparisons of full‐scale mainstream online course delivery are available (White, ). Some notable exceptions for foreign languages are Adair–Hauck, Willingham–McLain, & Earnest–Youngs (), Blake & Delforge (), Cahill & Catanzaro (), Chenoweth & Murday (), Chenoweth, Jones, & Tucker (), Cziko & Park (), Green & Earnest–Youngs (), Grgurovic, Chapelle, & Mack (), Hampel (), Hampel & Hauck (), Lamy (), Scida & Saury (), and Soo & Ngeow (). To my knowledge, none of these online projects have used the can‐do statement approach or OPI/ILR measures.…”

Gender Agreement in Online Versus Classroom Students of First-Semester Spanish

“…Despite this concern, studies show no significant differences in learning achievements between online versus classroom students in L2 German (Green, and Youngs 2001) or Spanish (Echávez-Solano 2003;Walkzynski 2003;quoted in Blake 2013). Surprisingly, other studies show that online students perform even better than classroom students in L2 Spanish (Blake 2007;2008;Cahill, and Catanzaro 1997;, L2 French or Spanish (Adair-Hauck, Willinghan-McLain, and Earnest-Youngs 1999;Chenoweth et al 2006;Chenoweth, and Murday 2003), or L2 English (Soo, and Ngeow 1998). Blake (2008;2013) asserts that online students have longer contact with written materials in Spanish, thus it is expected that they outperform classroom students in writing tasks, which has been the privileged task in pedagogical-based research on the matter.…”