Kelly Arispe, an associate professor in the Department of World Languages, gave two presentations at the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium in Montreal, Quebec, in May.
The theme of the conference was “Make it So-Fais ce que doit!” It brought together researchers and practitioners from across the globe. Conference presentations were delivered in both French and English, including a plenary that mixed the two without translation and promoted “translanguaging,” a process in which multilingual speakers use their languages as an integrated communication system.
Arispe participated in a Teacher Education Special Interest Group panel titled, “21st Century Skills For All: Social Justice, Maker Culture and Teacher Education.” She presented her recent work on The Pathways Open Educational Resource Repository where advanced language students created free educational materials for Idaho language teachers.
Arispe also presented her research on intermediate language learners and oral competence in a presentation titled, “The role of learner autonomy in CALL to impact oral competence for intermediate learners of Spanish.” This presentation reported on three 15-week iterations of a mixed-method study that examined the impact of learner autonomy on oral competence for intermediate-mid/high second language learners of Spanish, situated within a design-based framework. Learners used a social media content creation tool, Soundcloud, to archive six 30-minute chat sessions with a partner. Learners individually reviewed and tagged their chat recording responding to guided reflections that target characteristics from performance benchmarks specific to their level, as well as three concrete goals for improvement.