The philosophy behind Conectate is simple: take what we know about
second-language learning, combine it with the best practices in
second-language teaching, and infuse it throughout with stimulating
cultural content that challenges students to see themselves and the
world in new ways. The overarching goal is to help instructors
teach a highly effective, consistently engaging, and truly
inspirational course in Spanish that is based on solid research.
*Meaning-based activities: At its core, language is a way of
expressing meaning, so all activities in Conectate guide students
through the process of using Spanish meaningfully, either by
understanding sentences that they hear or see, or by producing
sentences that express what they want to communicate. Students are
given myriad opportunities to engage in meaningful activities
within a rich cultural context in all four skills: listening,
speaking, reading, and writing. *Active-learning approach: Students
learn best when they are fully engaged with the material and are
actively participating in every stage of the learning process.
There is strong evidence that learning improves when students try
to anticipate what is about to be learned or when they test
themselves on what they have just learned. To this end, Conectate
incorporates these techniques in every chapter. Rather than simply
presenting students with a vocabulary list, for instance,
vocabulary activities in Conectate ask students to figure out which
word goes with which meaning, requiring students to engage actively
with the material. Grammar activities, similarly, have students use
a grammar point in meaningful ways right from the start, allowing
them to uncover some basic grammatical properties on their own
before these have been explained to them. As the research
literature and everyday experience show, this type of challenge
leads to better learning outcomes. *Input-to-output sequence: In
every section of Conectate, students focus first on comprehension
and then transition to production. This sequencing of activities
ensures that students are fully prepared to do each activity and
follows a fundamental principle of language acquisition: you learn
to understand before you learn to produce. Whether focused on input
or output, though, all activities are solidly meaning-based. In the
initial activities, students see or hear the words and need to
understand them, while in later activities, they need to speak or
write the words in order to express an idea. *Review: Students
learn best when they revisit topics on a regular basis, so
Conectate builds in review as an integral part of the program. Each
grammar section, for instance, is preceded by a brief
active-learning activity that refreshes students' awareness of a
related grammatical point that they have already seen. In addition,
for certain topics that are known to be challenging, such as object
pronouns, students build up their knowledge incrementally over the
course of several chapters, always reviewing what they have seen
previously before proceeding. *Authentic language and culture:
Students will ultimately be using their Spanish in the real world,
not in a classroom, so Conectate is infused throughout with videos
of Spanish-speakers from all over the world, telling their stories
in a spontaneous, unscripted, and natural way. From the very
beginning, students learn to understand buenos dias, for example,
the way people really say it, and as they proceed, they learn to
understand more extended discourse. The activities are carefully
designed so that beginning students can understand and engage with
this natural speech, despite the fact that it is "real Spanish,"
not language artificially created for a textbook.
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