This practical example attempts to implement more direct interaction between the teacher and the students. By incorporating several exercises during lectures, the students can get evaluation and feedback during the following classroom instruction. The exercises vary the teaching and also give the students an incentive to engage in the classes.
Lectures take up more time than classroom instruction, and there are also more students present. This means that there is not enough time for the teacher to give detailed feedback to each individual student.
We developed different interactive activities for the teaching in order to:
give students more immediate and individual feedback – also in connection with the lectures.
vary the teaching and to refine the students’ work with written grammar exercises.
The teaching each week consists of a lecture and classroom instruction. Together, these constitute a theoretical and a practical aspect.
For each lecture, two to four interactive activities are handed out - in addition to the teacher’s slides - which are woven into the lecture. The students have access to slides, but not exercises, before the lecture. After the lecture, the slides with answers are uploaded.
Example of a two hour lecture:
Lecture
Noun quiz (individually or in pairs, five minutes)
Opportunity to ask questions about exercises
Lecture
Interactive exercise on prepositions - “Insert the correct preposition in the sentences below” (individually or in pairs, five minutes)
Opportunity to ask questions about exercises
Lecture
Preposition syntagm quiz (individually or in pairs, five minutes)
Opportunity to ask questions about exercises
For the classroom instruction, students discuss an exercise sheet each week that they have worked on as a part of their preparation. Selected parts of the exercise sheet are reviewed during class, and the students discuss the different exercises among themselves and with the teacher.
Example of a two hour classroom instruction:
The students fill out an exercise sheet (interactive PDF) as a part of their preparation.
During class, the students get the correct answers (via LMS), which are reviewed with the teacher.
The exercises during lectures work really well. They give the students immediate feedback and, if a solution doesn’t make sense for a student, the teacher can explain it in-depth.
The exercise format gave the desired variation and was able to engage students when it has otherwise been difficult to concentrate for 2 x 45 minutes in a row.
Both in-person attendance and fully online teaching have worked out well.
It is always great to develop and renew one’s teaching, and it has resulted in both new knowledge and new inspiration. The teacher has been able to bring their experience with the interactive exercises into other contexts. Always getting new ideas on how to adapt and further develop.
The teaching in this subject is divided into five general topics, but begins with a grammar part at the start of the semester. The purpose of the grammar part is to make the students able to understand how the Spanish language is constructed at a basic level and apply this knowledge to linguistic production.
In the grammar part, the students are introduced to grammatical theory during lectures. Afterwards, they practice what they have learnt during classroom instruction through exercises that focus on reception as well as production.
