Multimedia Tools in a Spanish Conversation Class
José María Pérez Fernández
Department of Foreign Languages
University of Delaware
 
This paper consists of a demonstration of the on-line multimedia material developed for a Spanish conversation class (Spanish 305) at the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department of the University of Delaware. The basic instructional software used is SERF, developed by Prof. Fred Hofstetter at the University of Delaware, which is complemented with some other multimedia software. The purpose of the project is to offer audio and video input to students in order to enhance traditional in-class teaching. By doing so, the students have the opportunity to review audio and video material at home, before and after class. The material also involves the submission of all sort of files to the instructor for grading, which will supplement the in-class grades. Thus, not only text, but also audio and video files may be submitted for the instructor to grade. The project pursues a successful integration of traditional in-class instruction with the new possibilities offered by multimedia material, above all in terms of instructor-student interaction and student-student interaction. Also, audio and video material offer enormous possibilities for a conversation class with respect to the kind of input the students need. Whereas with traditional, in-class teaching, this input could only be provided during class, the new techniques offer the possibility to have convenient and easy access to this material from home, so that the student can use it and review it in a more dynamic way.
 
Back to the introduction Spanish 305 Website jmperez@udel.edu