Melisa Dracos

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Philosophy of Teaching

Course Description

ANGEL in the classroom

Teaching Samples

Spanish Resources

Use of Technology in the classroom

Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese

Spanish Basic Language Program (SBLP)

Philosophy of Language Teaching with Technology

Having dedicated many years of my life to learning a second language, both in classroom settings and study abroad programs, I have been exposed to a wide-array of both effective and ineffective foreign language teaching methods.  Yet, as a young student, I did not have a positive language learning experience.  At the end of four years of high school language learning I was still unable to communicate orally in the target language without first writing out what I wanted to express; Spanish, for me, was memorization, paradigms and dictionaries. My experience is a common one.  Due to the unsuccessful teaching methods that are still implemented in some language classes, many students struggle or fail to become effective communicators in the target language.

Through my education, research, experiences as a teacher and time abroad, I discovered numerous shortcomings with the traditional grammar-based and drill-based methods, and as a result began to develop as well as implement a communicative methodology focusing on the expression of meaning in a low-anxiety environment where students are not scared to make mistakes. If the ultimate goal is to communicate in the target language, then the aim of second language acquisition instruction must be to create an optimal language learning context that helps students reach this goal of interpreting, expressing and negotiating meaning in the target language.  In order to promote such an environment, I see myself as the resource person or architect who provides students with the tools to be active learners, a process which I believe is facilitated and greatly enhanced by effective use of modern technology.

In order for successful language acquisition to take place, research shows that students must be exposed to language that they both understand and that carries a message. Since the primary source of target language input that most learners receive comes from the classroom, it is therefore crucial that instructors provide sufficient input of this sort. In order to enhance the comprehensibility of the input and facilitate the ability to process both the meaning and form that it contains, this input should be as “real world” as possible and focus on the “here and now”. This is where technology is a true asset. To this end, I create visually and audio enhanced power point presentations that facilitate the process of contextualizing the input (i.e. making the input concrete rather than abstract) in topics with which students are familiar and/or can relate. Furthermore, by incorporating pictures, videos, music and websites from Spanish-speaking cultures into these power point presentations, I can provide learners with authentic media materials that help them recognize the importance of the language as well as, hopefully, the relevance it has to their own lives. Research has shown that student motivation will also greatly increase if they consider what they are learning to be important and somehow applicable. Language acquisition in the college classroom should not seen be seen by the students as a mere collaboration of grammar and vocabulary; rather, Spanish must be taught and presented to students such that they connect it with a unique culture, and understand it to be a living language used by millions of people, both in and outside of the United States.

Once learners have been exposed to sufficient input that pushes them toward optimal processing of the particular target structure, I believe it is our job as instructors to provide ample opportunities for learners to produce both written and oral output in meaningful contexts. Research has shown that interaction and the opportunity to write and speak are crucial to the acquisition process in that they help students improve accuracy and fluency in the target language. Again, I feel that the technology we have at our disposals can greatly enhance, facilitate and diversify the opportunities that students have for production. From reacting to the content of online media (e.g. pictures, music videos, news presentations) to engaging in a conversation based on a visually enhanced scenario presented in a power point presentation, to producing target forms in ANGEL, there are countless ways in which technology aids in the provision of these activities.

Technology also provides a means by which we can accommodate individual differences. For example, students can work through online input and output activities in ANGEL at their own pace, receiving personalized feedback that helps each individual student recognize her strengths and weakness so she can focus her attention on the particular area (e.g. listening comprehension, reading comprehension, grammar, vocabulary) where she needs the most improvement.  I have found online lessons and practice to be especially helpful for those students that are hesitant to participate in class and prefer individual learning. I have also seen that computer-based feedback can be more beneficial for some students than both implicit and explicit feedback provided by the instructor. This is because students may take personal offense to explicit correction provided by an instructor in front of peers (which is one of the reasons why I try to avoid this practice) and they may not always notice the implicit feedback that consists of just rephrasing what the student said correctly. Thus, computer-based instructional programs offer a way to accommodate individual differences and provide salient, personalized feedback that is computer-generated and not associated with human criticism.

In sum, I believe that the goal of an instructor is to provide the tools and opportunities needed for a student to develop a linguistic system that allows him/her to effectively communicate in the target language.  Since technology is a tremendous asset in forwarding this goal, I believe judicious usages of technology should form an integral component of modern foreign language instruction. In my view, it is inevitable that students will become better communicators in the target language when given the opportunity to learn in a comfortable environment that focuses on the expression of meaning and takes advantage of technology in order to accommodate individual differences and give a sense of “real world” relevance to the language.

The Pennsylvania State University: Copyright 2008
Last updated on October 27, 2009 3:58 PM
email: mjd1021@psu.edu