Spanish Course for Beginners
1. Objective
The objective of this course is to provide real and false beginners with the ability to carry out basic interactions in a Spanish speaking country.
The classes are based on a situational approach, taking our participants to places where tourists would normally go. 98% of the classes are delivered in Spanish. English is seldom used.
2. Duration
The course is designed for 2 weekly sessions of 90 minutes, over a period of 8 - 10 weeks, and a class 0 to develop basic SL skills and classroom vocabulary.
Before the actual classes, there is class 0 where students learn basic classroom language which will be used in class and SL skills such as camera controls, voice calls, IMs, etc.
We also offer consolidation classes which are fun events for participants to review the content of the previous lessons while having fun.
3. Assumptions:
- Participants have sufficient SL skills
- Participants have English as a fall back help language but course is delivered 99% in Spanish
- No explicit grammar
- Course has the feel of a coherent ‘event’ or adventure (starts on arrival in airport and ends with goodbye party).
- These are not stand- alone modules. It is a course
- Course is fun
- Course biases where possible towards movement, demonstration, role play playing to SL strengths
- Course provides a paper record of material which acts as a reference for participants when they travel
- Revision and recycling is built into course
4. Methodology:
- Situational - students learn to do things in the corresponding context. For example, they learn to check-in a hotel but checking into a hotel in Second Life and talking with a receptionist. As can be seen in the slide, Languagelab is a very complete city with different contexts to exploit.
- Functional - the aims in the syllabus are that the students learn to do certain specific functions they will use when visiting a Spanish-speaking country.
- TPR - for beginners a lot of repetition is necessary to learn the vocabulary. However, students do not repeat in a static way, they are asked to run to things or to practice through games. So, we use different repetition techniques to avoid boredom.
- Task-based - Students are assigned tasks/activities to be performed in the different LLab locations (depending on the lesson) where they interact with Llab City People in order to accomplish their tasks.
5. How do we teach Spanish in LLab?
a. Planning: Apart from the language content, in order to teach a class or to write a lesson plan one has to have basic SL skills such as knowing how to create and upload textures, manage their camera controls, move objects, etc. Lessons are always walked-through, and trialed before offering them to the public. A lesson plan includes:
- objectives
- vocabulary and phrases to be taught
- SL skills needed by the students
- Sections of the class - detailed description of the activities for each section - length in minutes - materials needed.
- Organization of a class: Usually, classes have these stages:
- Greeetings and sound check
- Informing class objectives to students
- Revision of previous classes
- Development of the class (usually in different sections and locations)
- Wrap up - passing notecard with class vocabulary - asking feedback - answering questions
b. Materials: Beginners need a lot visual clues, which is very time consuming, but we consider this is fundamental at this level:
Realia: SL objects
Textures: images
Text: boards - notecards
Recordings - in-world and web-based (self-access wiki)
SL instructional tools (teacher-made, Llabyo created - from others)
c. Activities: Classes need to be dynamic and engaging, so, we base our activites on dialogues, simulations, role plays, and games, which are carried out individually, in pairs or groups. We also have supporting self-access materials to be used in-world and on the web. The web-based self-access activities are located on a wiki. Activities are planned so that old content is integrated to new content (recycling)
d. Team-teaching: this is a unique feature of our Spanish course that allows us to model pronunciations and activities, and also to give help in technical issues. Instructions are an essential part of the task in any level, if students don't understand instructions, the activity won't work. They are especially important in beginner levels in inmersive classes like ours. It is very important to plan how you are going to give the instructions beforehand and without the figure of the Helper who provides valuable help when the teacher wants to give an example so the students can see how the activity is done, students would find it extremely difficult to understand instructions
e. Approaches: As pointed out, the main approaches used in this course are TPR and situational, and the teaching of vocabulary and grammar is done inductively.
f. Student support: Students should be offered support at all times, during class (with pronunciation, instructions for activities, technical problems, etc. ) and out of class (sending messages with locations for classes, answering questions, asking for feedback, etc. ). We have to keep in mind that students have different learning styles. Private meetings with students throughout the course to give feedback.
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