Corazón, corazón. ¿Qué más pides, corazón? Corazón ¿Estás ahí? ¿Qué sientes? El día está iluminado y no porque haga calor o haya salido el sol en febrero, sino porque mi corazón siente el bienestar de mi hogar. Las paredes del Internet han pasado a ser el aula virtual donde mi mente está relajada, donde puedo pensar. No tengo la necesidad de desinfectarme las manos al tocar las teclas del ordenador que tengo en el despacho de mi casa.

This study focuses on reflective practice journal entries and compares intermediate Spanish learners’ journals of their own oral performance through two different opportunities - an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and a Virtual Oral Interview Classroom/based Exam (VOICES) - within the framework of a Spanish for the Professions course. Students’ journals reveal that both types of assessment have their advantages in the learning process, which results in more autonomous and more efficient learners (Ziegler, 2014). Moreover, data from the two focus groups reveals information about sufficiency, relevance, beneficence, and usefulness about the Spanish speaking activities used in the Spanish for the Professions course. This study presents an assessment use argument following Bachman and Damböck (2017) that may be used to design and teach language courses using micro-formative and macro-summative oral assessments. Using an assessment use argument, claims were made about the use of VOICES and OPI. Participants in this study were 13 undergraduate students at a large public university in the Midwest of the United States and one instructor. They were enrolled in an intermediate Spanish conversation course designed for professionals. Language performance data for oral assessments from face-to-face and online formats were evaluated comparing instances of language use. The data showed that the two types of oral assessments engaged learners in different types of learning opportunities.

This article examines the use of technology-mediated, task-based language teaching (TBLT) in a hybrid environment as an instructional approach in an intermediate-level Spanish course. It (a) evaluates elements of a hybrid course that was developed with computer-assisted language learning (CALL) materials to help learners improve their Spanish, focusing on two areas of specialization––engineering and business; (b) examines the effectiveness of the course materials and curriculum with a focus on CALL readings; (c) demonstrates that the technology-mediated TBLT approach in the hybrid learning environment was successful in linking content and language; and (d) establishes that the learners’ speaking skills had improved over the course with a computerized oral assessment. Language assessment results indicate that the technology-mediated TBLT program not only had an impact on intermediate Spanish learners’ speaking skills, but also prepared learners to perform tasks in both the target language and their fields of interest (i.e., business and engineering). The results contribute to the research of the effectiveness of technology-mediated TBLT.

Con la tecnología multimedia sofisticada, hay un interés renovado en la relación entre canales visuales y auditivos en la evaluación de la comprensión oral (CO). La investigación emergente sobre el uso de elementos visuales en la evaluación de la comprensión oral ha producido resultados no concluyentes. Algunos estudiantes se desempeñan mejor en pruebas que incluyen la información visual (Wagner, 2007) mientras otros no han encontrado ninguna diferencia en el desempeño de los participantes en los dos formatos de prueba (Batty, 2015). Estos resultados mixtos hacen que sea necesario examinar el papel de la utilización de audio y vídeo en CO, medido por pruebas de comprensión oral en la L2. El presente estudio examinó los efectos de dos tipos diferentes de apoyo a la comprensión oral en la comprensión de alumnos en la L2: (a) ayuda visual mediante un vídeo cuyo contenido fue modificado con redundancia y (b) sin ayuda visual, sólo audio cuyo contenido fue modificado con redundancia. El grupo de participantes en este estudio estaba formado por 246 estudiantes de castellano matriculados en dos cursos distintos de castellano intermedio en una gran universidad del Medio Oeste de E.E U.U. Participaron en cuatro tareas de comprensión oral, bien con vídeo, bien con audio. Se presentarán las conclusiones sobre el papel del vídeo cómo dispositivo de apoyo a la comprensión oral y las diferencias entre los formatos de curso con respecto a sus efectos sobre la comprensión oral de los estudiantes de castellano de nivel intermedio. También se comentarán las preferencias de los participantes con respecto a los diferentes apoyos a la comprensión oral.

Con el avance de la tecnología, estudios empíricos han demostrado que los estudiantes de lenguas extranjeras matriculados en un curso a distancia o híbrido consiguen los mismos o mejores resultados que los que estudian en un curso presencial (Blake et al., 2008; Chenoweth y Murday, 2003; Enkin y Mejías-Bikandi, 2017; Pardo-Ballester, 2018). Sabemos que el éxito de los estudiantes matriculados en dichos cursos depende de su motivación, pero también del esfuerzo que haga el docente y del entrenamiento que haya recibido en la pedagogía de la lengua a distancia (Blake, 2012). En este estudio, 101 docentes de ELE respondieron a una encuesta anónima que investigó el bienestar emocional en tres periodos: antes, al comienzo y durante la pandemia. Con dicha investigación se pretende (1) averiguar cómo había afectado el cambio de enseñar con una pedagogía presencial a una virtual y también (2) ofrecer recomendaciones a los administradores de instituciones de enseñanza superior. Este estudio responde dos preguntas de investigación: ¿Cumplieron los docentes de ELE su papel de educar a sus estudiantes durante el curso escolar 2020-2021 a pesar de enseñar en plena pandemia? ¿Cumplió la administración universitaria su papel de apoyo ofreciendo al profesorado recursos eficaces?

This mixed-method research study examines the speaking proficiency of Spanish learners with the Virtual Oral Interview Classroom-based Exam (VOICES), a free oral assessment tool for students and teachers, and the American Council Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) for assessing their oral ability. Students’ oral proficiency was assessed at the beginning and end of the semester via the OPI, and oral performance was assessed during the middle and at the end of the semester with VOICES. During the semester, learners practiced with structured and communicative output activities with the purpose of developing communicative competence. Using active learning as a pedagogical approach and reflective practice based on Schön’s principles (1987), Spanish instruction was focused on conscious awareness, scaffolding, autonomous and meaningful communication as a way to improve the performance of oral tasks. The study employs the convergent design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011) that entails the collection of qualitative and quantitative data sets to provide a better understanding of the best practices for teaching and assessing speaking. Participants in this study were 13 undergraduate students at a large public university in the Midwest of the United States and one instructor. They were enrolled in an intermediate Spanish conversation course designed for professionals. The use of active learning and reflective practice contributed positively to building a comfortable and engaging learning environment.

In the last decade, university institutions have been increasing, which demand from the teaching staff a greater offer of courses where technology is effectively incorporated into teaching. Critical studies published today, relating to the use of different technological tools in conjunction with language teaching, repeatedly contain the terms "distance learning" or "online course", as well as the terms "hybrid" or "combined" for make reference to the same model, to the same type of course. This study distinguishes two terms to refer to two models of courses: "hybrid at a distance" and "face-to-face ALAO". The oral dexterity of 132 participants was evaluated through pre and post-tests with the purpose of investigating the mastery of this skill with students enrolled in different teaching models and different semesters (first and third semester). The results of ANOVA indicate a statistically significant difference between the two models "hybrid at distance" and "face-to-face ALAO" in the first semester of Spanish in the overall score of the examVersant and in fluency favoring the students of the "hybrid distance" model.

A principios de los años noventa empezaron a culminar proyectos de tele-colaboración en los que muchos educadores de lengua contactaban a otros que se encontraban ubicados en otro lugar con el fin de que sus estudiantes colaborasen juntos. El punto geográfico no fue un obstáculo para el aprendizaje de una segunda lengua (L2). Por ejemplo, estudiantes de español como lengua extranjera o L2 en una universidad estadounidense colaboraban con otros que aprendían inglés, pero estaban ubicados en Chile o cualquier otro país de habla hispana. Estos intercambios virtuales se lograban mediante las simples herramientas del chat o correo electrónico y gracias a la tele-colaboración muchos estudiantes mejoraron sus habilidades de escritura y lectura. Muy pronto distintos estudios empíricos, como el de O’Dowd del año 2003, revelaron que no solo era posible mejorar la habilidad de leer y de escribir en la L2, sino que dichos proyectos representaban grandes fuentes de intercambio cultural.

This longitudinal study examines students’ learning strategies of 222 Spanish intermediate learners when taking several listening tests. It also examines the effect of different instructional formats (online-hybrid vs. face2face-blended) on the learners’ strategy use. There were four versions of the same text: an audio format, a video format, a redundancy-enhanced version in audio format, and a redundancy-enhanced version in video format. A pseudo-cross over design was utilized for this study with four listening tests used with each group. Participants completed a questionnaire immediately after each listening test to learn about learners’ strategies before, during and after listening in order to elicit information about the particular strategies that learners used to complete each listening test.

Results indicated that there was a listening comprehension strategy development over time without explicit instruction, but participants from different instructional formats developed different strategies. There was a statistically significant difference for intermediate-low learners when perceiving the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies, but the effect of redundancy does not seem to have an impact. Intermediate-mid learners did not perceive a difference with the use of strategies when completing listening tests with or without redundancy.

Some learners perform better on listening tests that include visual input instead of audio only (Wagner, 2008) while others have found no difference in the performance of participants in the two test formats (Batty, 2015). These mixed results make it necessary to examine the role of using audio and video in listening comprehension (LC). This study examines the effect of input modality on the learning of new vocabulary with intermediate L2 learners. The study gave four versions of the same text: a baseline in audio format, a baseline in video format, a redundancy-enhanced version in audio format and a redundancy-enhanced version in video format. Three hundred sixty two intermediate learners of Spanish participated in this study over a period of three consecutive semesters. Results about input modality indicated audio or video does not seem to matter in responding correctly to the vocabulary items. However, the redundancy-enhanced version in audio and video formats helped learners to respond correctly to vocabulary items when enrolled in face2face-blended courses compared to online-hybrid courses.