Speaking World Languages Through Technology

I am trying to help my son get ready for his first year of teaching Spanish. He’ll have three preps. I am amazed that there are not more online resources to help him in a conversational manner. There are plenty of grammar and of vocabulary sites. I have not found any that promote communication. (I’m counting basic restaurant dialogues as vocabulary since students memorize the conversation.) I do not see collections of pictures that students can ask questions about, pretend to be the people in the situation, explain what is happening, etc. A picture of a statue of Don Quixote does not promote communication. A street scene with a store and people doing things encourages real language use. Likewise, I do not find many real conversations that he can play/download for his class. Sure commercial companies have teaser ones but I could not easily find real conversations (a great use for podcasting). So much technology and so little real life language use. So much technology being used for lower level skills but not for the actual purpose of language which is to being able to converse with another person.

How do you promote real conversations using technology in your World Language classroom?

5 Responses to “Speaking World Languages Through Technology”

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1 Larry Ferlazzo July 27, 2007 at 12:32 am

There are countless sites that help English Language Learners develop conversational skills. Here are some my students use:

http://www.bayworld.net/ferlazzo/englishbeg.html#audio

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2 hgtuttle July 27, 2007 at 12:49 am

Larry,
Thanks for these ESL/ELL conversation sites. I would like to see someone have a similar list for Spanish and other world languages.

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3 Anne Wall July 27, 2007 at 3:13 am

This is a pretty good one from the BBC. They have other languages, too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/lj/

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4 Larry Ferlazzo July 28, 2007 at 7:47 am

You might find this one useful, too:

http://www.visuallinklanguages.com/spanish/DLC/dlc.html

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5 Lauren Rosen August 8, 2007 at 4:20 am

I guess I’m a little baffled by the question as I think web 1.0 is great for receptive skills and the conversation happens by the students in the class whose ideas are triggered and developed by things that they see, read and hear. The web is a good resource for practice of content presented in class when you are looking at the grammar and vocabulary sites.

When you look into more advanced web technologies you can consider students using photos from the creative commons areas of websites or ones they take on their own, string them together with photo story or imovie, add their own audio, upload it to YouTube with as few are as many privacy restrictions as they want. Then these can be shared with the class or the world linked in a wiki where other content is placed by the student to demonstrate the full depth of what they have learned. These are just a few of the many tools available for students to use to demonstrate what they are able to do with the language they know and are learning, their language proficiency.

If you are looking for a communicative environment than you are looking for the students to be the creators of the content, not the Internet.

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