The purpose of this project was to compare two different COVID-19 Mexican "lotería" versions by Mexican-American artists Ernesto Quiñonez Curiel and Pinche Raf. Their work was inspired by the most popular traditional "lotería" set "Don Clemente Gallo," created by Don Clemente Jacques in 1913. Social semiotics was…

This article examines poetry written during the Spanish Civil War that reflects on the modern character of the conflict: the novel tactic of aerial bombing civilian populations as it was disseminated through the mass media. A comparative reading of this body of poetry written by Spanish, British, and American authors allows for the examination of…

The present study provides empirical data measuring the effects of a flipped and blended course design for beginning-level Spanish on the four skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening, compared to a control group following a traditional present-practice-produce instructional format. The study provides a template for the successful…

Interacting with native speakers in various types of virtual exchanges is becoming increasingly accessible for language learners and teachers around the world. The present study examined the experiences of beginning and intermediate level learners of Spanish in the United States as they interacted weekly with native Spanish speakers over the…

The purpose of this study is to explore the connection between two goal theories and to investigate how goals and the goal setting process can have an effect on academic achievement and linguistic and intercultural competence development in the Spanish second language (L2) classroom. Specifically, this study employs achievement goal theory and…

This study investigates whether dynamic visual enhancement affects the recall of second language (L2) vocabulary and whether working memory interacts with visual enhancement and vocabulary recall. Participants in four groups completed a pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test that measured the effects of the type of dynamic…

Spanish heritage language learners (SHLL) on the United States-Mexico border in Texas often select online classes for convenience. This qualitative investigation presents preliminary information on how these SHLLs view twenty online Spanish courses based on 391 course evaluations. The literature indicates a need to consider heritage languages…

Educational institutions with world language requirements face increasing student demand to offer Spanish Language for Specific Purposes (SPSP) courses at lower proficiency levels to fulfill language requirements. Language for specific purposes courses are designed to fulfill the communicative needs of students within a specific professional…

Over the last several years, we have been witness to a growing body of work that examines the acquisition of Portuguese as a third language (L3). Here in the United States, Spanish speakers account for 45% of students enrolled in Portuguese classes (Milleret 2012), divided among first language (L1) Spanish speakers, second language (L2) Spanish…

This current study proposes a comparative method of teaching authorial style, using four versions of "Exemplo XI," an often-anthologized tale about the "mago" of Toledo, Don Illán, from the "Conde Lucanor," a series of interlinked tales by the early fourteenth-century author Don Juan Manuel. Teaching a medieval text…

: Bookmapped storytelling, a pedagogical approach designed by Terence W. Cavanaugh and Jerome Burg (2011), allows students to trace a character's trajectory on a digital map. The use of this digital tool in foreign language education and its effectiveness in helping students reach proficiency remains little studied. In this article I explore the…

This pilot study looks at the effect of learning second language vocabulary with gesture. Specifically, this current study asks whether researcher-instructed or student-constructed gestures are more effective. Depth of processing theories (Craik and Lockhart 1972) as well as more recent educational frameworks like ICAP ("Interactive,"…

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…

The purpose of this paper is to compare structured input (SI) with other input-based instructional treatments. The input-based instructional types include: input flood (IF), text enhancement (TE), SI activities, and focused input (FI; SI without implicit negative feedback). Participants included 145 adult learners enrolled in an intermediate…

Despite myriad changes to language teaching methods over time, university-level classroom spaces have largely remained the same--until now. Recent innovations in classroom space design center on technological advances, include movable furniture and coffee-shop style rooms, and are believed to facilitate language learning in several ways.…