Idoia Elola

Digital stories: Bringing multimodal texts to the Spanish writing classroom

Despite the availability and growing use of digital story software for authoring and instructional purposes, little is known about learners’ perceptions on its integration in the foreign language writing class. Following both a social semiotics approach and activity theory, this study focuses on six advanced Spanish learners’ perceptions about the production of a digital story in which they integrated a variety of modes (written, oral, images, sounds) and manipulated the semiotic resources within each mode (size, color, lines in the image mode), to convey meaning. Analyzing participants’ reflections, questionnaires, and online journals, results highlight learners’ (a) interpretation of the tools and artifacts and their effect on their understanding of a final product, (b) connections between short-term goal-oriented actions and the longer-term object-oriented activity of developing a multimodal text, and (c) linguistic reorientations when creating a digital story.

Similar and/or Different Writing Processes?: A Study of Spanish Foreign Language and Heritage Language Learners

Following a cognitively-oriented framework, this study builds upon the authors’ previous work (Elola and Mikulski 2013; Mikulski and Elola 2011), which analyzed writing processes (planning time, execution time, revision time), fluency, and accuracy of Spanish heritage language (SHL) learners when composing in English and in Spanish. By analyzing Spanish foreign language (SFL) learners’ writing processes when composing in English and Spanish, the current study compares writing behaviors in both languages within the SFL group, as well as provides a comparison between the writing behaviors of the SHL and SFL learners completing the same writing tasks. SFL learners wrote less fluently, performed more surface revisions, and demonstrated less accuracy when writing in Spanish than in English, but monitored more in English. However, they allocated similar amounts of time to execution and planning across languages. Compared to their SHL counterparts, SFL learners wrote less fluently and accurately and devoted less time to Spanish intersentential planning and English monitoring. The SFL learners performed more surface revisions in Spanish and fewer meaning revisions in English and Spanish than the SHL learners. Insights into cross-linguistic transfer of writing skills and pedagogical suggestions are provided.

The impact of direct and indirect feedback on the development of Spanish aspect

ABSTRACTThis study explores the impact of direct and indirect feedback on the improvement of Spanish past aspect (imperfect/preterit) in writing activities in a third-semester Spanish course. Ninety learners were divided into three groups: direct feedback, indirect feedback, and control (no feedback). Learners completed a pretest, a posttest, and a delayed posttest. Although it remains unclear which type of feedback is more effective, results indicate that both types improved preterit–imperfect performance. As the delayed posttest showed, however, learners exhibited more lasting improvement (as indicated by the delayed posttest) when working on the production Activity than on the terminology and selection activities.