Mini Project Dos

Here is my Mini Project Two

My Thoughts on Intercultural Communication

This week we read about and chatted about intercultural communication in the classroom. I personally think that foreign language learners should be exposed to the culture that they are studying as much as possible. Through communication with native speakers of the language that they are studying they can also learn about cultural aspects that go along with that language at the same time. It would be interesting for language learners to ask the native speakers questions about their native culture. Through a asynchronic communication such as discussion board or email students can communicate with eachother about cultural issues that are in the news or they can discuss stereotypes that surround their own cultures and the culture of the language that they are studying.
I think that I would like to have some sort of intercultural communication in my classroom. I would like to set up my students that are Spanish learners with local students that are Spanish speakers and are ESL students. I think that through communication the students can learn about eachother's cultures while practicing the language at the same time.
To me intercultural communication is a "win-win" communication over all!

My video

Obama Video

Mini Project Uno

This is my first mini project. This project is about CMC in the foreign language classroom!!

CMC in the Classroom

Last class we dicussed the different types of CMC in the Foreign language classroom and the pros and cons of such tools in relation to SLA. I think that asynchronous tools such as emails/blogs/discussion boards can be great for students when learning a foreign language. It would be great to set up the students with either native speakers of the target language or with other students that are learning the language as well. I think it would be interesting and benificial for the students to read news articles in the target language and through email/blog/discussion postings they could dicuss the article with their partner that they have been assigned. Through this exchange the students would have the opportunity to not only practice their writing skills in the language but would also have a chance to discuss cultural viewpoints. It would be especially interesting to compare the cultural interpretations of the students that are learning the language with the students that are native to the language and culture. A pro for this type of activity would be that students have a chance to think about what they want to write before they write it and maybe less nervous as they might be if they were having a synchronous discussion through a CMC tool such as AIM or through video/webcam discussions.