Go back to Case Studies menuDana Flaskerud, Columbia University
The World Wide Web is an obvious tool for language instruction. The Web's global nature allows educators to tackle challenges that come with teaching a foreign language outside its cultural context. In addition, the computer's multimedia capabilities give them many options for presenting language-instruction materials. Says Dana Flaskerud, "Foreign-language teaching cries out for the use of technology." Dana is a graduate student at Columbia University. She teaches all levels of Spanish, as well as introductory Spanish and medieval literature. In fall 2000, she will become interim director of Columbia's language program. Dana began to use the Web after participating in Project 2001 at Middlebury College, in Middlebury, Vermont. Funded by the Mellon Foundation and run by Middlebury's Center for Educational Technology, this program trains instructors of foreign languages to integrate instructional technology into their curriculums.
Dana was excited by the possibilities the Web presented. Though she was a beginning teacher with only two semesters of teaching experience, she was frustrated with some of the established modes for language teaching. "I wanted to bring up the level of sophistication for class discussion. I didn't want to go around the room saying, 'Okay, you start the first paragraph,' and have each student read. That's how it went the first couple of semesters of teaching." Dana also saw the Web as a way to appeal to different types of learners. "I wanted to be able to address different learning styles, such as the global learner, who looks at things as a whole and appreciates skimming text, or the haptic learner, who likes to click the mouse and requires "hands-on" learning, or the visual learner, who can see the images and the glossed text." Another concern was student independence. "I was concerned about a task that takes one student five minutes and another student fifteen - how do you address student pacing problems in the classroom?" To address some of these shortcomings, she developed a curriculum around various "texts" that she found on the Web.
"One of my assignments is on los toros (bullfighting) in the context of cultural stereotypes. I send the students to one site that is totally anti-toros and to another site that is totally pro-toros. They have to read what they find at the sites and come up with a list of five pros and five cons, and then form their own opinion. This way they get different perspectives and can choose - learning is in their hands. I'm not giving them a predigested page or a nota cultural out of a book." The Web exercises are assigned as homework, but Dana integrates the topics from the texts into the classroom. "For example, El Pais has an article called 'Tentaciones,' and it's all about what young people in Spain are complaining about. We'll have a pre-reading exercise in class where I'll say, 'Okay, what are you guys complaining about?' We'll have a conversation for about ten minutes to start them brainstorming. Then I send them away with the link and they read the text at home. I set up a Web bulletin board where they brainstorm online: What are the most frivolous complaints, what are the most serious complaints? I have them write a response and then talk about their own complaints. I do this to get them not only to just read but to be able to talk about their reading and write about what they've read, so that everything is integrated."
Dana encourages her students to write freely on the bulletin board. "Their online writing is much more colloquial, which I don't mind. Some people would say that it really does matter: that they need to type it out and put the heading and follow the MLA guidelines. Obviously there's a place for that, but I don't think the place is Spanish 1. In our program we require them to write four formal compositions - it's just not natural, and it doesn't work. What does work is the electronic writing, and the daily writing, and my not necessarily correcting every grammar error they make."
The work of her project is twofold: locating Web sites and constructing exercises to go with them, and then creating her own Web sites. Dana uses Macromedia's Dreamweaver to create her course Web sites, and although it took "many, many hours" to learn, now that she is comfortable in the environment, she finds that using the Web saves her time with some of the administrative aspects of teaching. "Using the Web takes more time initially, but then it becomes so much easier. I don't think I could live without it now. Even just for practical reasons, like posting assignments: I get so sick of the same excuses, like, oh, sorry, I didn't get the homework. I say, 'Sorry, it's there on the Internet and you have to get it.' And with email and conferencing, I don't get the same question twice. Since the answers are there on the site, I send my students there to read them."
Dana uses the Web for another repetitive task of teaching any language: grammar drills. Instead of using valuable class time for the sort of, "go around the room - you, you, you - fill in the blank-type of activities," Dana sends her students to sites with online grammar drills that provide instant feedback. Then, instead of doing drill sessions, she spends class time getting her students to "converse and discuss and communicate," using the grammar they've learned through the online drills.
This new approach has met with some resistance from other language instructors. "The other day a colleague said to me, 'Dana, now I know you are a great fan of these modern technologies and these MTV-style methodologies, but I tell you a good drill session is what they need!'" But in Dana's view, if technology is not part of the curriculum, the language program is outdated and lacks continuity. "I develop these materials for my Spanish 1 course, but then the students move on to someone else's class where they are not using the Web. We need to collaborate with one another if we're going to take this anywhere." She thinks that part of the trouble is that language instructors are overwhelmed by today's array of options. Textbooks now come with Web sites, CD-ROMs, videos, workbooks, and audio. With all these materials, "something has to give." But Dana suggests that "instead of thinking of all this as adding on to the traditional curriculum, we need to rethink our approach. We need to decide whether students would benefit more from these new paradigms." Many language teachers support the use of technology in the classroom, and Dana's students constantly cry for "more Web!"
Perhaps the real issue facing language instructors is not whether to use technology in their curriculum but a far more basic teaching goal: Where do educators want their students to be at the end of their four semesters of basic language instruction? Asks Dana, "Should they be able to conjugate verbs, or should they be able to communicate?"
Page information
From Web Teaching Guide
Copyright 2000 Sarah Horton
Spanish 1202: Intermediate Spanish II
Copyright 2000 Columbia University
www.columbia.edu/~dlf26