Beyond Parties and Piñatas: Technology Provides Access to Latino Cultures for Beginning Spanish Students
Goals
As a land grant institution, the University of Minnesota is charged with improving "educational access." In part this means cultivating relationships between the University and outside communities. Minnesota's vibrant Latino population represents a diversity and richness of Spanish-speaking cultures. How might students enrolled in beginning Spanish courses connect with Spanish-speaking communities and develop an appreciation for this panoply of cultures? How do Spanish instructors meet this challenge?
Technology Strategies
For Angela Carlson-Lombardi, supervisor of Spanish 1003 for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, technology is a great help. Carlson-Lombardi and Fernando Ordóñez, a College of Liberal Arts (CLA) technology fellow, co-created Vamos a andar, a Web-delivered course supplement for Spanish 1003. The project was funded by her 2004 Digital Media Center faculty fellowship and a grant from the CLA Infotech Fees Committee. Thanks to a team of dedicated students who did filming, research, and transcription, to support from DMC consultants, and to a course release from her department, Carlson-Lombardi and Ordóñez were able to pilot the project this past summer.
The multimedia format helped them overcome some obstacles. They wanted to help students access cultural resources and build their language skills. However, students may not have the time or transportation to visit places where Spanish is spoken. Paying travel expenses for and honoraria to guest speakers may be prohibitively expensive. Through the inventive use of technology, Carlson-Lombardi and her team were able to overcome these constraints.
Connecting with Spanish-speaking cultures requires going beyond "parties and piñatas" and understanding the complexity and diversity of the Spanish-speaking world. A listening activity created for the Web site offers a lesson on both vocabulary and "Latino" music, which often has been homogenized in the United States. It includes a video interview with Renato Lombardi, a musician from Argentina (and Carlson-Lombardi's husband), who explains that he has never played salsa music, contrary to the expectations of his American audiences. However, he does play rock and American country music. He further explains that Argentine popular music has been shaped by many cultures—Spanish, African, indigenous—and encompasses a range of forms such as chamamé, la milonga and of course, tango. Adds Carlson-Lombardi, the exercise helped her students expand their musical horizons and "get beyond the stereotypical Rudy Valentino-and-tango stuff."
Confidence in their own abilities is also crucial for students making their first forays into speaking Spanish. By completing Web-based assignments and exercises on the Vamos a andar site, students are able to build both their basic language skills and confidence. They can listen to audio files of native speakers from countries such as Guatemala and Mexico, and even a speaker whose second—not first—language is Spanish. The variety enables them to develop listening skills and more. Carlson-Lombardi says: "Sometimes [students] feel defeated—they listen to audio clips, they get frustrated, they don't understand. By using people with different levels of proficiency and different accents, we try to set [students] up for success so they won't get discouraged. And we provide them an opportunity to hear Spanish as it's spoken."
Outcomes
According to Carlson-Lombardi, technology-enhanced teaching has been a positive experience for both her and her students. "It brings a real richness to the class, and as instructors we are able to light the desire in others to learn. In the end isn't that what we all want?"
