Senior Project Advisor

Jordan Sandoval

Document Type

Project

Publication Date

Spring 2021

Keywords

Spanish, Linguistics, Pronunciation, Teaching, Pedagogy, Second Language Acquisition, Phonology

Abstract

Students in the language classroom often face a variety of challenges inherent to the process of learning a second language as an adult. These range from lack of sufficient motivation to structurally uninspired curriculum and are often amplified in the case of a drastic shift in environment. Such a shift took place rapidly over the course of 2020, transforming thousands of classrooms into virtual versions of themselves in a matter of weeks. Students began to receive vastly different quantities and types of language input and interacted with the language in substantially affected ways. Factors that previously played a large role in classroom success, like student confidence and willingness to communicate, became almost impossible to effectively address, especially in the face of a huge lack of resources for educators. To attempt to address the variety of challenges wrought by the pandemic, I surveyed high school teachers on the changes in experience created by the shift to online learning and used their input to create a lesson concerned primarily with explicit pronunciation concepts. I then observed a high school AP Spanish class over the course of six weeks and delivered this lesson virtually. The content communicated in the lesson was inspired by the work I had completed as part of a previous research team at Western, that investigated the effectiveness of explicit pronunciation instruction in the intermediate college-level Spanish classroom.

Department

Linguistics

Subjects - Topical (LCSH)

Spanish language—Study and teaching; High school students—Education (Secondary); Distance education; Lesson planning

Genre/Form

essays

Type

Text

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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