My Students

My students are students of the 100-200 level Spanish courses at Michigan State University.
My students can be anyone, any age, of any major.
My students are unlikely to be majoring in Spanish.
My students are likely to be enrolled in my course due a requirement that they take one or two years of a language.

Some of my students have never taken a Spanish course before.

Some of my students took four years of Spanish in high school.

My students are unlikely to pursue the language past the requirement.
My students are likely to be full time students, with my class only making up 25% of their course-load in a given semester.
My students are busy with work from the classes pertaining to their major and often do not see Spanish class as high priority.
My students grew up in a high-technology world.
My students are very smart, and very savvy.
My students like to find shortcuts.

As I mentioned, unfortunately, my students often don't see my class as a very high priority. I'm usually willing to give extensions when students are honest about having a heavy work load a certain week. At the same time, if my students give me their full attention in class, none of the work that needs to be done outside of class should be very time consuming. However, students who are taking the class because of a language requirement aren't always interested in participating in class.

Since my students are so technologically savvy, they are constantly looking for the easiest route, often turning to technology to help them. It is up to me to design assignments in which translators aren't useful, but to also be on the look-out for tell-tale signs that a student used a translator on an assignment.

I must also deal with the issue that in a low-level Spanish class, there is a giant gap between the people who have never taken Spanish before, and the people who took it for years in high school. It is a difficult balance creating lessons that accommodate both categories of students, but it can be done by using lessons that allow students to use the language to fullest extent to which they feel comfortable. Also the use of class blogging can be beneficial because although one student may start the class with a lower-level of Spanish, they have access to plenty of examples from their classmates that are published to the blog instead of only ever knowing their own responses to short writing assignments.

Also, as I mentioned in my previous blog entry, my students' comfort with technology can be a huge asset to my class. My class may be low priority but I have the power to use technology to make my assignments the most fun. I can use technology to stimulate class lectures to make even the students who are only there to meet their requirements enjoy being there.

Technology can help my students make the most of their knowledge of the language by getting them to use the language on the same mediums they already use in English, thus learning the language in a more practical, everyday, real-world-situation kind of way that they would never be able to from just a textbook and a classroom environment.