No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Not available / text

The investigator evaluated a commercially available Spanish word recognition ability test. The material consists of four lists of fifty bisyllabic tetraphonemic Spanish words available from Auditec of St. Louis as: "Spanish speech discrimination lists 1-4". Interlist equivalence, word difficulty, speaker's intelligibility, and P/I functions' slopes were investigated. Taped lists were presented to 16 normal hearing native Spanish speaking adults at four presentation levels. Statistical analysis indicated that the intelligibility of list three is significantly different than the other lists at the.05 level. At the low presentation levels, subjects of Mexican origin obtained better scores than subjects of other nationalities. The P/I functions' slope (4.3%) was comparable to that obtained by investigators of English tests. Most frequently missed words have as common denominators: presence of the /s/ sound, and are words that retain their meaning even after deletion of final /s/. Talker's speech intelligibility was judged to be very clear.

Includes lesson plans. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

A questionnaire was administered to a selected group of students of Spanish at The University of Texas. The responses to this questionnaire were studied to determine the students’ motivations, attitudes, and cognitive strategies concerning the Spanish preterit and imperfect verb forms. It was found that the students felt that these Spanish verb forms are important in Spanish study and that they are a difficult portion of Spanish study. Also, most of the students surveyed used rule-based cognitive strategies concerning the study of these verb forms, in that a large percentage of the students’ strategies are to study their textbook and to memorize grammar rules. Generally, the students felt that the Spanish preterit is less difficult than the Spanish imperfect and that more drills, work sheets, and instructor-supplied examples would be beneficial to their learning processes. Those students with lower self-reported grades concerning the Spanish preterit and imperfect are more likely to have been informed that the Spanish preterit and imperfect are difficult areas of Spanish study. / text

Not available / text

The ever-increasing popularity of digital media and connectivity to the World Wide Web permeates every day culture to the extent that the use of modern technologies also influences the teaching of foreign languages. In connection with the desire to implement sound pedagogical practices that align with Standards of teaching foreign languages, teachers are turning to modern technologies to incorporate into their teaching repertoire. Not only do teachers attempt to integrate the four language skills and culture into their teaching, but they are now urged to incorporate technology into their curriculum. The smart classroom offers the greatest potential for instructors to integrate technology into their curriculum, since this resource is already available across college campuses. This qualitative multiple case study explored the conceptualization and reconceptualization four lower division instructors of Spanish made as they attempted to integrate the resources their smart classrooms had to offer. Secondly, this research project also highlighted the challenges instructors faced while integrating technology into their curriculum. Lastly, this study underscored the advantages instructors believed might derive from integrating technology into their classrooms. Data for this study was collected from four main data sources. Five observations were conducted during the fall of 2005. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with each of the participants at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester. Email reflections were requested from the instructors every two to three weeks during data collection. The course syllabus, lesson plans, and class activity handouts comprised the documents data base. Findings profiled the changes instructors made over the course of the semester in terms of their conceptualizations and re-conceptualizations of the technology offered by smart classrooms. The challenges instructors faced suggest that instructors need to take advantage of more professional development opportunities, as well as enter into dialogue with their peers and other instructors. The advantages highlighted the depth and breadth of the foreign language learning experience, as well as the affordances the accessibility and availability of information stored on the Internet can hold for instructors. This study concludes with pedagogical implications and recommendations for directions of future research. / text