SPANISH 305 WEBSITE PROJECT
JOSÉ MARÍA PÉREZ FERNÁNDEZ
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
University of Delaware
 
INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES

 

This project is part of the web-based instructional material developed by the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Delaware in French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.  

Spanish 305 is a conversation class whose overall objective is to provide the students with conversation practice to improve their communicative abilities in culturally and socially relevant contexts. The students are expected to acquire not only the ability to use the Spanish language but to do so with a sufficient knowledge of those social and cultural codes and values that may be embedded or may intersect with oral communication. In order to acquire a fluent and well-informed communicative competence the students need to receive this kind of input in addition to the purely linguistic one.

Thus this course uses texts and dialogues that provide both linguistic information in terms of what vocabulary, expressions and structures they need to achieve their goals. These communicative goals are defined by specific situations such as travelling, going to a doctor, looking for a job, etc. The texts and dialogues the students use as a starting point also provide cultural and practical information about these situations in a Peninsular Spanish context.
 

The Spanish 305 Website is thus designed to provide material to enhance traditional, in-class instruction. In the website students will find
 

  • Useful links to previously existing websites that contain cultural information such as guides to cities, museums, artists, etc. Some of these websites also give very practical information such as how to look for a job in Spain. Those students who wish to go beyond the requirements of the class may find in these links a useful source of information to keep on learning about Spanish culture.
  • These previously existing websites are also used as a source of information for in-class activities and homework. They are an excellent source of realia for work. Students can have easy access to them (they can see them at home, print them out, etc.) and with a level of quality that was not available in the former sources of realia in the traditional classroom.
  • The website also provides its own pages, where students can find basic information such as an introduction to the course, the course requirements, the course calendar and syllabus, and the course contents arranged by topics (i.e. both culturally and communicatively defined areas), as well as additional texts and dialogues.
  • In addition to what traditional, hardcopy material provided (i.e. text and images) the use of the web facilitates the access of students to audio and video material. This material is especially useful for a conversation class.
  

From the perspective of the instructor, the use of the web and in particular of SERF offers some very interesting advantages:
 

  • It facilitates the creation and distribution of material for the students which they can access any time from their computers.
  • The level of out-of-class interaction is increased by the use of e-mail and other interactive tools between students and instructor, as a group or individually, and also among the students themselves.
  • The task of grading is facilitated by the automatization of this process in SERF.
  • In addition to the basic in-class grading, students can submit all sort of files to the instructor, such as text, audio and video.
  
 

The Spanish 305 Website intends to offer the students the information they need to enhance their knowledge of Spanish culture in all its different aspects: society, mass media, labour market, the role of men and women. This will provide them with a solid basis and a good starting point to improve their communicative skills. It is also designed to encourage them to keep on exploring the culture through the language beyond the boundaries of both the classroom and the course so that they can develop a lifelong interest in Spanish language and culture.
 

  
 
 
jmperez@udel.edu Back