Nos Vamos de Viaje- Content Integration Through Task

Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

Task-Based III:

Expanding the Range of Tasks with Online Resources

NOS VAMOS DE VIAJE:CONTENT INTEGRATION THROUGH TASK

Laura Marqués Pascual

University of California, Santa Barbara

Alvaro Llosa Sanz

University of California, Davis

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a task-based project in which the use of several web-basedapplications has been combined and incorporated in order to integrate the four languageskills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. The project,

Nos vamos de viaje

(http://nosvamosdeviaje.wikispaces.com), is a comprehensive Web-based activityinvolving the task of planning a vacation to a Spanish-speaking city, designed for aSpanish language classroom of high-beginners to intermediate L2 learners.

INTRODUCTION

Several key theories underlie the design of the task we present here. Preeminent amongthese is communicative language teaching with its view of the teacher as a facilitator leading a student-centered class (Lee & VanPatten 2003). Such an approach calls for newlearning tools that can enhance students’ performance as self-learners. We employ one of those new tools—a wiki, a multi-collaborative dynamic web-based space—in the activity presented here. Wikis provide a means to connect students to one another and to allowthem to communicate among themselves as they develop ideas, content, and other products of their learning process. Additional web-based technologies enhance L2 learners’ contact with the target language by providing students access to a wealth of authentic cultural materials that neither textsnor individual instructors alone (or combined) can provide. The fact that texts mustartificially limit the amount of page space they dedicate to culture, and that no individuallanguage instructor can be a master of all cultural knowledge from every target languagecountry, makes promoting cultural understanding in the classroom a daunting task at best.The use of authentic materials mediates to some extent these two challenges. Access toauthentic materials also often makes language and culture learning more meaningful for the students. While language teachers had to collect such realia in the past, the web now provides a means for students to gain access to these directly and on their own. Byopening an internet window students can access endless opportunities of viewing, andeven interacting with, the target language and culture. Through the use of the internet,students can read about real people, learn about them, or even talk to them through

Laura Marqués Pascual & Alvaro Llosa Sanz

Nos Vamos de Viaje: Content Integration…

computer mediated communication. They can take a virtual trip to far away countries towhich they may never go, or listen to real conversations and news broadcasts from TVstations. Moreover, texts accompanied by video or rich images like authentic picturesappeal to the learner’s visual memory, and provide connections that make it easier toremember the language that accompanied the images (Underwood, 1989).Keeping this in mind, we can use technology in the language classroom to create or enhance those learning environments that will promote second language acquisition. The

interactionist hypothesis,

which posits that the opportunity to interact in the L2 is centralto developing L2 proficiency (Gass 1997, Doughty 1998), underlies the goals of acommunicative classroom in which linguistic interaction takes place in contexts that areas authentic as possible. Web-based technologies such as blogs, wikis or chat rooms canencourage a learner-centered environment that favors such contexts and socialinteraction. Paired with a task-based approach, the implementation of those technologiescan help us to create contexts in which L2 learners have to collaborate in order to solve aspecific task and are forced to interact and negotiate meaning when communication breakdowns occur.The project presented here aims to integrate the use of new technologies in the teachingof Spanish as a foreign language, focusing on vocabulary and grammar learning inauthentic and original contexts within a task-based approach. This approach promotes theinteractive aspect that is a crucial component of communicative language teaching, andmakes the students active participants in the learning of the pragmatics of the targetlanguage. The activities presented through the project are communicative in that theyoffer students the highest level of interactivity: they permit one-on-one, personalexchanges, as well as group discussion and individual web search of authentic materials.These activities also combine both asynchronous (i.e. differed time) as well assynchronous (i.e. real-time) communication, to accommodate different learning stylesand strategies, as well as to provide a relaxed, less threatening atmosphere.

Nos Vamos de Viaje: A Practical Example of a Multimedia Task-based Activity

Nos vamos de viaje

(http://nosvamosdeviaje.wikispaces.com

) is a comprehensive web- based activity for a high-beginners to intermediate Spanish language classroom. It is aninteractive, multimedia project which consists of five contextualized lessons focusing onthe different steps involved in completing the task of planning a vacation to a Spanish-speaking city. Each lesson contains a set of exercises and activities that pertain todifferent steps of gathering information, reading authentic texts, negotiating meaning andcooperating with peers. The outcome of each step prepares students for the subsequentlesson. The activities in each lesson unit aim to promote both practice and learning of vocabulary, grammatical structures and cultural aspects of the target languagecommunities. The structured organization of the project fosters process-oriented learningthrough the recycling of vocabulary and grammatical structures that proves morevaluable than simple learning or practicing new lexical items and grammar in isolation.As a by-product of having to complete the project, students gain cultural knowledge andawareness through their exposure to authentic target language materials in the real2

Laura Marqués Pascual & Alvaro Llosa Sanz

Nos Vamos de Viaje: Content Integration…

context of planning a trip. In accordance with a task-based approach that focuses on formrather than on formS (Ellis, 2005)

1

students also practice vocabulary and grammaticalstructures in context, integrated within the activity as a means to attain the goal of thetask.The technological tool used in the creation of such a multimedia project

is a wiki—acollaborative space on the web where different users can work asynchronously on thesame project, editing or adding new information and/or pages. Several open-source webresources offer different versions to create free wikis;wikispaces.com

2

was used for

Nosvamos de viaje

. The use of a wiki affords, in addition to text, the inclusion of images,videos, podcasts and audio materials through easy-to-use integration techniques and theinsertion of the corresponding files. For example, a photo image, a video clip or a podcastextracted from another internet site can be easily inserted into the wiki project as astraightforward process that resembles the creation of an e-mail message. Thus, a wikioffers a multi-collaborative and dynamic space that can be easily accessed and modified by any one of the authorized multiple users. Another advantage is that it permits theadministrator to follow up on the elaboration and updating of the project, since eachaddition or edit by any user is registered automatically in an accessible history, providingthe instructor with the opportunity to follow the development of any given student’scontributions at any time.

Nos vamos de viaje

was developed during the fall of 2007 for a first-quarter, second-year Spanish class at U.C. Santa Barbara. Major topics from the textbook used in class werechosen by the instructors who created the activity (for a list of these topics, see AppendixA). The language classes at this institution have an enrolment limit of 25 students.Students were taken to the language computer lab to complete the first set of activities ineach of the five lessons during one class period of 50 minutes. The 25-station languagelab in this institution is installed with a variety of language learning-supportive software,such as

Wimba

,

Xclass

and

Yackpack

3

, some of which are incorporated in

Nos vamos deviaje

.Though this activity was created with a particular set of learners in mind, it can beadapted to different levels (end of the first year to second year of college instruction, or high-beginners to intermediate learners) depending on whether it is used as a context tointroduce new materials (i.e. travel vocabulary, weather expressions, comparison

1

A focus-on-form (as opposed to focus-on-formS) approach to language teaching emphasizes a form-meaning connection and teaches grammar within contexts and through communicative and task-basedactivities (see Ellis 2005).

2

For more information on wikispaces.com, the reader is advised to visithttp://www.wikispaces.com/site/tour#introduction

3

Wimba

(http://www.wimba.com/products/wimbaclassroom/) is a “live virtual classroom” software thatsupports audio, video, application sharing, and content display, enabling instructors to add vitally importantelements of interaction that cannot be provided in a text-based course.

Yackpack

(http://www.yackpack.com/) is a similar application, which permits voice message recording and allowsinstructors to chat with their students. Both Wimba and Yackpack have to be purchased by the institutionallanguage laboratory. Skype or MSN Messenger can be used as alternative options and are provided free of charge.

3

of 00

Leave a Comment