Research on Multimedia applications for Teaching Languages

I gave this talk at the AATSP last July, 2016. For my surprise, instructors and professors were very interested in applying my methodology in their classes, so I immediately shared my presentation with the American Association (AATSP) hoping to get more people involve. My research is based on my 18 years of teaching experience in languages. During all this time I have noticed how my homogeneous class has switch to a heterogeneous class. The incoming bilingual students have brought a reach approach on learning from different perspectives, and have improved my own learning experience. An heterogeneous class can be a challenge, but only at the beginning. If instructors pay attention to the new type of students we are getting now: native digital students, we can tell they have a broad information about everything, but nothing in a deep perspective. Our job is to explain how things work, and if you are like me (love using multimedia and online applications), we can teach them how to use technology for the own advantage.

I will explain a bit how it works: For online and hybrid courses, I try to find the style preference for each student. Once I got it, I help them to develop beyond the comfort zone dictated by their natural style preferences. By teaching students when, how, and in what contexts to use particular strategies or groups of strategies, students are able to open up to different ways of learning. One of the keys was to offer systematically a great variety of activities within a learner-centered, and communicative approach. Once learned a set of strategies, I present applications and networking sites that belong to the extracurricular context, but that it engages students with the target language. The combination of virtual or e-learning platforms and other networking sites in online and blended courses help to keep students motivated, and interested in learning more about how to communicate in the target language.