u02a1 digital media for Spanish class

Languages are very complex. However, our brains are hard-wired to process and learn language. We internalize the differences between “I”, “me”,” my”,” mine”, “myself” and usually apply them in the correct way without, in most cases, the advantage of formal education. Of course, I hear a lot of my students say, “Me and my friends have to …” (But hey, there are exceptions to every rule, as my algebra teacher taught me.) Unfortunately, when we learn a second, or third, language the circumstances are not the same. Rarely are we immersed in the situation where we hear only that language 24/7, which is how we normally acquire our first language. So we go to Spanish class instead of moving to Venezuela for a few years.
The focus of languages classes has changed over the years. Years ago, the emphasis in language classes was translation, where students sat looking at texts in the target language and attempted to derive meaning from them. Nowadays, it’s all about communication, using the language in the four skill areas: speaking, listening, reading and writing. National standards also include culture, connections, comparisons and communities. These take the language beyond communication so that students also “gain knowledge and understanding of other cultures, connect with other disciplines and acquire information, develop insight into the nature of language and culture, and participate in multilingual communities at home & around the world” (A Collaborative Project of ACTFL, 2008)
In order to accomplish these goals, students must acquire a large body of knowledge, often by rote memorization, but they have to be able to synthesize and create new structures in order to put their knowledge to use. Learning a foreign language is, indeed, an exercise in developing higher level thinking. Digital media is a valuable tool for this endeavor. It not only provides multiple ways of presenting the material in a lesson, it is also a vehicle for countless projects that students can create. There are Spanish videos that introduce grammar and vocabulary; there are hundreds of interactive sites on the Internet where students can practice what they have learned. They can download Latin music to their mp3 players and learn the songs that they like most, an easy way to build grammar, vocabulary and cultural insights. Through email and/or video conferencing, students can interact with “key pals,” native speakers of their target language. They can create podcasts, digital stories, their own video clips, all in the target language. Newspapers and magazines, television shows, music videos, all in Spanish are readily available with the click of a mouse. The list goes on and the opportunities for our second language learners are as numerous as the ideas they can generate.
Now, after all that, back to basics. One of the first things that we cover in beginning Spanish classes is the Spanish alphabet (el abecedario o el alfabeto). Spanish, unlike English, is a totally phonetic language, so once you learn the alphabet and the pronunciation of the vowels along with certain “irregular” consonants and a few that we don’t have in English, you can read Spanish like a native; that’s what I tell my students, “By the end of this lesson, you will be able to read any and all material in Spanish. Of course, you probably will not understand what you are reading…, but you will be able to pronounce it properly.” That is the primary goal of the lesson. Another goal is that students finish the lesson with a feeling of accomplishment, because they will be able to read Spanish material correctly and that should make them feel successful. I found a streaming video on the Discovery Education web site that introduces the Spanish alphabet and the rules for pronunciation. It is quite comprehensive while also being amusing. I could use it at the beginning of the lesson to introduce the material. Other possible uses for the video are: embedding it in a power point presentation (as I will be doing for the project due next week), posting it to the class moodle site for students to use as a resource, using it at student work stations so students can work at their own pace, and/or use it at the end of the lesson to reinforce the material.