• Title/Summary/Keyword: Teaching Spanish as Foreign Language

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Retroalimentación Positiva de los Profesores Nativos de ELE

  • Choi, Hong-Joo
    • Iberoamérica
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    • v.23 no.2
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    • pp.135-178
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    • 2021
  • A teacher's talk does not make a simple delivery of information. It reflects the role of the teacher, since the language used by a teacher intervenes in a crucial way in the complex mechanisms that underlie teaching and learning of foreign languages. In this sense, the ways in which teachers give feedback have an impact on the process, not only of learning, but also of teaching. The important role of emotional factors in learning has resonated strongly in the intuition of many second and foreign language teachers. As a result, over the past three decades, research on foreign language acquisition has confirmed the hypothesis that language learning is enhanced by rapport between teacher and student. This study analyses the positive feedback given by native Spanish teachers in the context of university classes in Korea. The positive words from a language teacher are related to forming emotional factors such as motivation, attitude, interest, self-confidence, self-esteem, anxiety, and empathy, which directly influence in the acquisition of Spanish. 35 hours of oral practical classes taught by three native teachers of Colombian, Spanish and Mexican nationality were examined. According to the result, almost all the correct answers from students were corresponded with some type of positive feedback. The most frequent strategies are making a compliment, an approval, a repetition, and laughter or non-verbal cues. It is interesting to observe that teachers don't use only a single strategy to provide positive feedback, but instead combine multiple ways to enrich the positiveness of the feedback.

Development of Spanish Teaching Model Applying Action Learning through Strengthening Communication (스페인어 교양수업에서 액션러닝을 통한 소통 강화 교수학습 모형 개발)

  • Kang, Pil-Woon
    • Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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    • v.12 no.2
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    • pp.121-127
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    • 2021
  • This study is to propose a communication strengthening teaching model using action learning for Spanish learners, and to verify its effectiveness through a case study of Spanish lessons. This study was conducted under the same conditions by dividing 91 students from September 1 to December 20, 2019 into experiment and control classes. As a result of the experiment, both classes improved their writing ability to some extent, but the learners in the experimental class applying action learning showed more meaningful results in terms of the content, expressions, fluency of the text, and the affective domain test also showed a significant difference. The development of this teaching model, which is necessary for learner-centered convergence activities, is expected to be of academic significance as it can be used for other foreign language class activities as well as improving Spanish communication.

The Aquisition and Description of Voiceless Stops of Spanish and English

  • Marie Fellbaum
    • Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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    • 1996.10a
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    • pp.274-274
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    • 1996
  • This presents the preliminary results from work in progress of a paired study of the acquisition of voiceless stops by Spanish speakers learning English, and American English speakers learning Spanish. For this study the hypothesis was that the American speakers would have no difficulty suppressing the aspiration in Spanish unaspirated stops; the Spanish speakers would have difficulty acquiring the aspiration necessary for English voiceless stops, according to Eckman's Markedness Differential Hypothesis. The null hypothesis was proved. All subjects were given the same set of disyllabic real words of English and Spanish in carrier phrases. The tokens analyzed in this report are limited to word-initial voiceless stops, followed by a low back vowel in stressed syllables. Tokens were randomized and then arranged in a list with the words appearing three separate times. Aspiration was measured from the burst to the onset of voicing(VOT). Both the first language (Ll) tokens and second language (L2) tokens were compared for each speaker and between the two groups of language speakers. Results indicate that the Spanish speakers, as a group, were able to reach the accepted target language VOT of English, but English speakers were not able to reach the accepted range for Spanish, in spite of statistically significant changes of p<.OOl by speakers in both groups of learners. A closer analysis of the speech samples revealed wide variability within the speech of native speakers of English. Not only is variability in English due to the wide range of VOT (120 msecs. for English labials, for example) but individual speakers showed different patterns. These results are revealing for the demands requied in experimental designs and the number of speakers and tokens requied for an adequate description of different languages. In addition, a simple report of means will not distinguish the speakers and the respective language learning situation; measurements must also include the RANGE of acceptability of VOT for phonetic segments. This has immediate consequences for the learning and teaching of foreign languages involving aspirated stops. In addition, the labelling of spoken language in speech technology is shown to be inadequate without a fuller mathematical description.

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Literary Text and the Cultural Interpretation - A Study of the Model of 「History of Spanish Literature」 (문학텍스트와 문학적 해석 -「스페인 문학사」를 통한 모델 연구)

  • Na, Songjoo
    • Cross-Cultural Studies
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    • v.26
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    • pp.465-485
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    • 2012
  • Instructing "History of Spanish Literature" class faces various types of limits and obstacles, just as other foreign language literature history classes do. Majority of students enter the university without having any previous spanish learning experience, which means, for them, even the interpretation of the text itself can be difficult. Moreover, the fact that "History of Spanish Literature" is traced all the way back to the Middle Age, students encounter even more difficulties and find factors that make them feel the class is not interesting. To list several, such factors include the embarrassment felt by the students, antiquated expressions, literature texts filled with deliberately broken grammars, explanations written in pretentious vocabularies, disorderly introduction of many different literary works that ignores the big picture, in which in return, reduces academic interest in students, and finally general lack of interest in literate itself due to the fact that the following generation is used to visual media. Although recognizing such problem that causes the distortion of the value of our lives and literature is a very imminent problem, there has not even been a primary discussion on such matter. Thus, the problem of what to teach in "History of Spanish Literature" class remains unsolved so far. Such problem includes wether to teach the history of authors and literature works, or the chronology of the text, the correlations, and what style of writing to teach first among many, and how to teach to read with criticism, and how to effectively utilize the limited class time to teach. However, unfortunately, there has not been any sorts of discussion among the insructors. I, as well, am not so proud of myself either when I question myself of how little and insufficiently did I contemplate about such problems. Living in the era so called the visual media era or the crisis of humanity studies, now there is a strong need to bring some change in the education of literature history. To suggest a solution to make such necessary change, I recommended to incorporate the visual media, the culture or custom that students are accustomed to, to the class. This solution is not only an attempt to introduce various fields to students, superseding the mere literature reserch area, but also the result that reflects the voice of students who come from a different cultural background and generation. Thus, what not to forget is that the bottom line of adopting a new teaching method is to increase the class participation of students and broaden the horizon of the Spanish literature. However, the ultimate goal of "History of Spanish Literature" class is the contemplation about humanity, not the progress in linguistic ability. Similarly, the ultimate goal of university education is to train students to become a successful member of the society. To achieve such goal, cultural approach to the literature text helps not only Spanish learning but also pragmatic education. Moreover, it helps to go beyond of what a mere functional person does. However, despite such optimistic expectations, foreign literature class has to face limits of eclecticism. As for the solution, as mentioned above, the method of teaching that mainly incorporates cultural text is a approach that fulfills the students with sensibility who live in the visual era. Second, it is a three-dimensional and sensible approach for the visual era, not an annotation that searches for any ambiguous vocabularies or metaphors. Third, it is the method that reduces the burdensome amount of reading. Fourth, it triggers interest in students including philosophical, sociocultural, and political ones. Such experience is expected to stimulate the intellectual curiosity in students and moreover motivates them to continues their study in graduate school, because it itself can be an interesting area of study.