HOW BLENDED LEARNING CLOSES THE LANGUAGE GAP BETWEEN NATIVE STUDENTS AND SPANISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Pablo Ortega Gil, Francisco Arcos García

2010

Abstract

Children of immigrant families with little or no knowledge of Spanish are referred to as Spanish language learners (SLL). During their first year in Spain, they spend some hours in pullout groups for learning the language, but many of them do not develop academic Spanish even after four or five years of schooling. As a supplement to those pullout groups and special programs, interactive tasks (integrated in a Learning Management System LMS such as Moodle) can greatly improve the linguistic abilities of SLLs for a number of reasons. First, these tasks often include recordings of academic Spanish. Second, some of these tasks involve working cooperatively with several native speakers. Finally, interactive tasks within an LMS can be done outside the limited framework of school time because they are open and ready to be used 24/365 days a year. The article provides details of an LMS for SLLs being actually used at a secondary school. The school had 15 SLL students enrolled in an experimental project involving the LMS while another group of 15 SLL students went on doing the traditional pullout groups. The results show that those in the first group have learnt faster and deeper than those in the second one.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Ortega Gil P. and Arcos García F. (2010). HOW BLENDED LEARNING CLOSES THE LANGUAGE GAP BETWEEN NATIVE STUDENTS AND SPANISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS . In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-674-024-5, pages 90-95. DOI: 10.5220/0002777000900095

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu10,
author={Pablo Ortega Gil and Francisco Arcos García},
title={HOW BLENDED LEARNING CLOSES THE LANGUAGE GAP BETWEEN NATIVE STUDENTS AND SPANISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,},
year={2010},
pages={90-95},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002777000900095},
isbn={978-989-674-024-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,
TI - HOW BLENDED LEARNING CLOSES THE LANGUAGE GAP BETWEEN NATIVE STUDENTS AND SPANISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS
SN - 978-989-674-024-5
AU - Ortega Gil P.
AU - Arcos García F.
PY - 2010
SP - 90
EP - 95
DO - 10.5220/0002777000900095