My Spanish Students Form Partnerships with Native Spanish Speakers using Skype
Learning Spanish while building connections with native Spanish speakers from all parts of the world has sparked great excitement and curiosity in my Spanish students. The connections they have made served as catalysts for increasing the strategies, skills, and the confidence with which to engage native speakers within both digital and face to face settings. Along with meeting regularly with the Latin-American students in the ESL classes of our school to actively develop their linguistic proficiency, students also project their presence far beyond our school to demonstrate their passion for knowledge by using Spanish across various social networks pertaining to their interests. Leveraging networking tools like Twitter and Skype , students have joined communities of global language learners such as Bilingual Connection and Soziety. Some students shared their perspectives about their learning during a focus group.
“In last year’s Spanish class I didn’t learn any of the stuff I am learning now because we didn’t have conversations with Spanish people.”
-Allie, Spanish 1 student
“I can have a simple conversation with someone in a Spanish speaking country, that in itself is an amazing thing for me.”
-Sean, Spanish 1 Student
“On Skype, people are going to say things to you that you don’t know. Whether it’s typing or pronouncing- And because somebody is actually talking to you, you are more tempted to look it up to see what it means and care about what they are saying rather than just ignoring them.”
-Jake, Spanish 1 Student
As Jake mentions, Skype is an excellent tool to learn vocabulary interactively within authentic contexts. It is a medium which allows students to fully develop all the the traditional modes of communication (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) and provides an open forum to meet and communicate with diverse intellectuals. Students can direct these individuals to their personal blogs on learningconnects.us to receive feedback on their learning experiences.
Sophie included the link to her Blog in her Skype profile.
Each student’s individual blog is his or her’s home base on the internet. It is each student’s independent space where they chronicle and reflect upon their explorations and interactions on the internet as well as those in their daily lives. Their blogs, which are easily accessible by any connected computer across the world, are also a place for readers worldwide to comment and share their thoughts about the content that the students are producing.
A Snapshot of Sophie's Blog (Click to Enlarge)
Sophie, one student in my class, has attracted several readers through her work. This has greatly increased her potential for creating meaningful connections around content that she is exploring and the the things she is learning. As an example, after reading one of her blog posts about her desire to travel to Chile, Carlos, a man living in Chile, commented on her post, expressing his excitement about Chile’s beauty and invites her to contact him to talk more about Chile via Skype if she wishes. His presence was marked on Sophie’s visitor map provided by whoseamung.us. As students are developing more native Spanish speaking readers who comment, they are regularly offered feedback on their work as well as opportunities to further their learning. These comments come in many forms. One example is Tatiana’s post where she was practicing a particular grammar exercise, and was offered elaborate suggestions by Victor, a native Spanish speaker who happen to come across her blog. Victor first asked her kindly if she would like his suggestions and then when she said “yes”, he came back two days later to write them for her. To read more on this check out my post on connective blogging.
