Reflective Essay

Carla Campos

FLT 890 Experiencial Module

Instructor: Dr. Amanda Lanier

Fall 2018

Experiencial Module Reflective Essay

Reflective Essay

About my Experiential Module

I have been working for two important online language schools for some years as a Spanish teacher. These institutions have created materials of different proficiency levels for their classes. However, these materials are just grammar, readings, and vocabulary Power Point presentations that have been adapted and translated from English into Spanish by teachers of the companies. The original materials were planned and created in English and as a result of the adaptations, the topics and contents in Spanish presentations seem disorganized and disconnected from one another. There are grammar and vocabulary gaps in the Spanish structure of the course and there are no extra exercises for students to practice at home.

Another problem, in one of the schools, is that some topics are insufficiently developed, or not enough exercises have been included in the materials. Even worst, few B1, B2, C1 and no C2 materials have been developed and of course, no specific purpose language courses are provided.

It is in this context that I identified a segment of the market that is not really attended by online Spanish language schools, which is “Spanish for Business” for students with a B1 and/or B2 proficiency levels. Therefore, after the completion of all the courses of the MAFLT program that provided me new and great tools, I decided to develop a Spanish for Business course during my Experiencial Module (EM).

With the guidance and help of Dr. Amanda Lanier, the first step for the design of the course was to write the “Milestones”, where I brainstormed and expressed all my ideas. To have the “whole picture” of the project, I answered to different questions like the following ones: “what are the objectives of the course?”, “what topics do your students need to learn?”, “how many classes do you need to teach all the topics?”, “what kind of materials do you need to develop?”

With the answers to those questions, I wrote the Project Description and defined the strategic plan for six modules (topics, parts, and contents). This information was organized in an overview grid and in six lesson plans.

The following key step was looking for literature that could provide a rational for the material I wanted to create. Finally, before developing materials, I needed to learn or improve my skills when using Google Classroom, Camtasia, Power Point, YouTube and Audacity.

My conclusions

When the project was over, the evaluation and interpretation of both my experience and final product allowed me to come to some important and useful conclusions.

· First, the MAFLT program has been key to make “Spanish for Business” possible, especially courses like Foreign Language Teaching Methods, Teaching Culture and Teaching with Technology that provided me with the necessary theory framework. Besides, it is compulsory to learn or improve the management of apps and software like Google Classroom, Audacity, Camptasia and Youtube to develop a project like this one.

· It takes a lot of time to write the texts for the materials and it can be very difficult to find volunteers to record the oral ones. So, it is necessary to keep this in mind and organize the recordings of videos and audios with plenty of time.

· To have ideas or models of materials to teach Spanish that are on the market already, internet is definitely the main source. However, there are few models of online “Spanish for Business” courses. In contrast, there is a wide offer of online “English for Business” courses which could be an intelligent solution and a good starting point of the research.

· The specific vocabulary, the cultural section, and the focused grammar points of “Spanish for Business” make the course clear and concise and a very useful tool to develop well- defined communicative skills.

· It is necessary to develop an assessment method that due to lack of time I couldn´t design. Such assessment, in the case of the materials I developed, should be based on the European Common Framework of Languages.

· An important characteristic of the course is that all final tasks are performed one to one with the instructor and that even when the situation is simulated, students must demonstrate they are communicatively competent. That is, they have to produce language in real time, fluently, intelligibly, interactively and appropriately for the context but also, they need to manage strategies to get around when communication falls apart.

· To do the final tasks, students need to go through and learn the materials provided in the sections before the final task. Such final task demand from students to be competent in the three modes: Interpretive, Interpersonal and Presentational.

Plans for the future

As mentioned in the conclusions, due to lack of time I couldn´t design an assessment tool. In that sense, the first action to be taken, will be to design and create an assessment tool for “Spanish for Business1”.

After that, I will look for some volunteers who can do the course and give me honest feedback from their experiences. They need to be B1 and B2 Spanish students that work in business environments or students of business-related programs.

Another important step to take is to move my material of the course to Schoology, since I do not find Google Classroom as friendly as I need.

Finally, after all this steps I will start with the design of “Spanish for Busines 2” and “Spanish for Business 3” but not until I have enough feedback from “Spanish for Business 1”.