Noticing the generally lower-than-desirable English language proficiency level with which Spanish students start university, I considered trying a different approach in which the use of a familiar application would be introduced in the classroom. The main objective of this work is to explore Primary Education degree programme students' attitudes…

The Year Abroad (YA) is one of the most valuable parts of our language degree programmes. Here we discuss some of the elements that constitute the assessment Nottingham Trent University students carry out to earn a YA diploma. More specifically we compare the two elements (blog and dossier) that we think contribute most to reflective practice, by…

The development of language courses designed specifically for Spanish heritage learners has recently gained much attention at all levels of education in the US. Since heritage learners started to acquire the language since childhood at home, their needs are different from those of students in the traditional foreign language classroom. To fulfill…

The scholarship on foreign language (FL) learning and teaching shows various ways Web 2.0 technologies are used to promote and ease communication and gives access to and cultural exchange of information, which are the main purposes of language learning. Despite prolific examination of strategies and impact of Web 2.0 to enhance language learning,…

This study investigates the ways in which synchronous and asynchronous activities create an online language laboratory that mediates second language (L2) learning for 188 L2 university participants over a 6-week period. Completion of tasks and pre-, post-, and weekly surveys were analyzed. Statistical analyses were run on self-rated questions…

Several decades of ePortfolio research confirm the power of the tool for helping students make meaning of varied curricular and personal experiences. For first-time users, however, the learning curve may be steep, and the gap between institutional or instructor goals and student experiences may be wide. Some studies suggest that students…

Higher education administrators are often faced with difficult choices in allocating limited resources for the creation of new programs. The purpose of this article is to explore the suitability of a new product, an integrated business Spanish major, by applying stakeholder marketing. In so doing, it provides a framework for the application of…

Intercultural simulations, such as Barnga (Thiagarajan & Steinwachs, 1990), along with the use of critical incidents (Gibson, 2002; Gropper, 1996), have long been a mainstay of intercultural communication courses and have found their way into English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms (Apedaile &…

This study investigated the differences in levels of achievement when learning the preterite and imperfect aspects in Spanish, at the recognition and production levels, between students who used instruction with video/photo blogs and wikis, compared to those who used instruction with traditional text-based technologies. Results revealed that there…

With the increasing popularity of Web 2.0 tools, it only follows that these technologies are adapted to our foreign language classroom practices. Research shows their numerous advantages as participatory tools that foster communication and collaboration. This study focuses on one such tool, the wiki, and describes the implementation of three…

This article reports on the use of design-based research (DBR) in the development of online reading materials for beginning and intermediate Spanish learners. The report focuses on four studies of two main aspects of the development, namely, interface design and learner perceptions. The discussion of interface design includes the analysis of…

This article aims to demonstrate how the use of an online journal, a bilingual blog, can contribute to filling in the language and cultural gaps of foreign language learners. This case study focuses on the participation, interaction, motivation, language acquisition, feedback and cultural input improved by students of Spanish as a Foreign Language…

Weblogs--personal online, web-based publications--have exploded on the internet scene in recent years. They are among the technologies indicating changes in the way information is created, managed, and exchanged. This study examined the use of a blog in an intermediate level Spanish class and its effect upon students. Could blogging provide an…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 11th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2014), October 25-27, 2014, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) and endorsed by the Japanese Society for Information and Systems in…

In the present study we call attention to the close connection between languages and globalization, and we also emphasize the importance of the Internet and online websites in foreign language teaching and learning as unavoidable elements of computer assisted language learning (CALL). We prepared a checklist by which we investigated 28 foreign…