Innovation in Language Learning

The ICT language research project, Entrando en comunidad, is a critical component of Span 331, an Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics at Gettysburg College. The incorporation of this mentored ICT language research project gives the students the opportunity of collecting, analyzing and archiving digitally Spanish language samples through a Hispanic Linguistic Blog. The language samples, obtained through video-interviews to the different Hispanic communities, are the main data analyzed in class activities. The interview questions are guided to incorporate a wide variety of topics that represent different sociocultural and historical aspects of the different areas in the Hispanic world.

During the language documentation process of Entrando en comunidad, students works cooperatively in pairs. Each pair has to video-record mini interviews to, at least, 5 Spanish native speakers of different geographical areas, including heritage Speakers of the USA.  The students divide each interview in 4 different questions according to the language difficulty. Then, they write the transcription of each language sample. Once the language samples are collected, students have to add each interview to the blog of the project, based on WordPress platform.  For each language sample collected students prepare a descriptive and critical analysis of the linguistic topic studied in class. The students also distribute the video interviews according to cultural topics since all the questions have to get information about specific cultural characteristics in the Hispanic world, such as questions on current news, traditions or type of food of the different Hispanic cultures.

After collecting and analyzing the linguistic samples, the students work with Carto DB digital mapping platform in order to locate in a map the different language varieties of all the video interviews collected. In this way, for each interview students specify the area of the language dialect (for example, Madrid) and put points linked with each interview on different layer, color coded by language difficulty.

The ICT language research project, Entrando en comunidad, combines the learning goals of the upper level undergraduate Hispanic linguistic courses at Gesttysburg College with the positive impact of learning a foreign language in contact with the community, as stated in the ACTFL guidelines.