Ana Gimeno Sanz

Fostering Learner Autonomy in Technology-Enhanced ESP Courses

The fact that there are more online resources available targeting learners with a higher language proficiency may imply that learners with lower proficiency levels, such as beginners and elementary learners, prefer face-to-face tuition and classroom contact, whereas intermediate and advanced learners are more willing to explore autonomous learning scenarios; a fact that seems only natural considering that learners who have an intermediate or advanced level of proficiency can, to a larger extent, become independent learners due to an existing knowledge base and subsequent understanding of the target language, conferring more autonomy on them. This also suggests that the Internet is slowly becoming an integral part of our English language teaching practice – especially at levels targeting higher intermediate to advanced learners – that there is an audience for these courses and also that learners are increasingly in need of materials and learning scenarios outside the boundaries of more traditional teaching. Learner autonomy is undoubtedly one of the assets brought about with the integration of computer-assisted language learning into the language curriculum. Strictly speaking, efficient learner autonomy should imply that learners take greater control over their learning, although this does not necessarily mean that their autonomy should be stripped of instructional guidance. For autonomy to be efficient, on the one hand, learners have to develop the capacity to be independent learners and, on the other, the institutional context in which they are studying must provide the appropriate backing and support for this to occur. This paper will reflect on a number of ICT-related initiatives that have been implemented at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia in order to foster learner autonomy in a technology-enhanced setting for learners of English for specific purpose. The author will refer to the pedagogical implications deriving from her experience in designing online language learning courseware and to different means of increasing learner autonomy.

Aceptación por parte de estudiantes de la ETSID del curso de inglés, InGenio FCE Online Course & Tester

El estudio que se describe en este articulo se basa en el proceso que se llevo a cabo para validar el curso online InGenio FCE Online Course & Tester desarrollado por miembros del Grupo de Investigacion CAMILLE de la Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) como una herramienta eficaz para preparar a los estudiantes para realizar y aprobar el examen Cambridge First Certificate in English. El proceso de validacion se llevo a cabo mediante la recogida de datos a traves de dos encuestas de opinion; una administrada antes de que los estudiantes iniciaran el curso online y otro tras completarlo. La poblacion encuestada ascendio a 146 estudiantes matriculados en varias de las titulaciones de grado de la UPV, con un nivel intermedio alto. A traves del estudio se ha podido comprobar que el mencionado curso online cumplia sus objetivos aunque se detectaron algunas mejoras a realizar, que sin el estudio habrian pasado desapercibidas.

Designing and Evaluating Online Language Learning Materials for Higher Education

This work was supported in part by the Valencian Regional Government in Spain (Generalitat Valenciana) under Grant FPI (Formacion del Personal Investigador)

A review of Centro Virtual Cervantes

The Centro Virtual Cervantes (http://cvc.cervantes.es) is the Internet-based branch of the Instituto Cervantes, the official Spanish institution commissioned to disseminate the use and study of Spanish language and culture around the world.Since its creation in December 1997, the CVC has rapidly become one of the most important reference sites devoted to Spanish language and culture on the WWW, having reached an average of over 100,000 visitors a month. This increasing number of visitors is primarily due to the great variety of resources available at the CVC website, which attract both professionals and the public in general. These include announcements of cultural events under Actos Culturales, the four discussion forums, each of which focuses on a specific topic, and the language classroom, Aula de Lengua, designed for both teachers and learners of Spanish.The CVC front page enables direct access to the entire contents which are well structured, and organised in a very user-friendly manner. The central part is dedicated to current cultural events and is therefore constantly up-dated. The sections included are listed on the left and right hand side of the main menu page.