Name: Cecilia Benenati

Institution: Lewis and Clark College

Language Area: Spanish

Project Type: 1- Summer Fellowship $3,000
2- Course Release/Sem. Fellowship $3,000

total $6,000

Project Titles:

For Summer Fellowship
- Computer Based Pronunciation Practice Exercises
- Adding and finishing touches to Visiting Latin American Countries. Dominican Republic.

For Fall 1999 Course Release
- Multimedia Lessons for Spanish 102.
- Web Pages for First Year Spanish.

Duration: Summer 1999 and Fall 1999 with probable extension for similar projects to Spring 2000.

Brief Description of Projects

- Computer Based Pronunciation Practice Exercises:

The LC Administration has decided to close our audio-lab and getrid of the Tandberg System for pronunciation practice. After the summer, our students will not have the Lab setting for recording, listening totheir pronunciation and comparing it to a native speaker, andre-recording.

I would like to devote the summer to develop pronunciation exercises with the above capabilities on the computer to substitute forthe function of the audiocassette. I am planning on using a HyperCard Stack that presents a dialog to the student, in which they take the place of one of the participants, record, play and listen to their lines. The advantage of it is that the student can do it over and over again, until he/she is pleased with the pronunciation and intonation of the specific lines.

I need time to find other kinds of exercises similar to the one mentioned above, and develop other pronunciation practice lessons.

- Visiting Latin American Countries:

I have finished with the some of the core pages for the Dominican Republic Orientation Web page(www.lclark.edu/~benenati/DRhome.htm), but Ineed more time to finish with the project completely.

The main pages are:

# The Country: This page will have general information about thecountry. (Not done)
# Maps: There are three maps for the students to get familiar with the country and the main cities. (The image map is not finished yet)
# The Program: This page has two parts, one dealing withguidelines to the LC Overseas Program, and a second one with guidelines to the CIEE Program.
# Photos: This page has pictures submitted by returning students and will have some from my trip.
# Places to Visit: This page has some information on interesting places to visit while the students are at the country. Students are going to contribute with their comments about their favorite spots. (Not finished)
# Tips. This is a very important page and one of the most complete of the site. It has special recommendations from returning students, sections of two books related to Latin American History and Culture, as well as some of my observations.
# Vocabulary, words and expressions used in the DR.
- Web Page (http://www.lclark.edu/~benenati): I have already created my Web Page in which I have included course curricula for Spanish 201, assignments (~benenati/spanish201.html), grammar charts with corresponding interactive exercises (~benenati/gramatica.html), links to student's pages created for the class, a link movies shown by the Spanish Club, etc.

Preterit vs. Imperfect Lesson: There is a page with a story about a day-trip to the Andes in Mendoza, Argentina. The story is supplemented with photos I took in my last visit to the country, fill-in-the-blank exercises and a questionnaire about the reading. (~benenati/lagunadiamante.html)

Things to finish:

# Grammar page: needs more interactive exercises to help students master difficult concepts. This semester students have been so excited about these exercises on the Web (because of their accessibility and self-correcting capacity) that I am planning on developing more of these programs.
# Links: I still have to create a page with links to newspapers, magazines, Universities in Latin American countries, etc.
# I would like to develop more lessons like the one on Preterit vs.Imperfect that use the same Java Script. These Java Script exercises are more complicated and take longer than the plain HTML.
# I would also like to set up a bulletin board and use it as a forum for discussions related to different issues presented in the lessons.

- Spanish 102-201 Multimedia Lessons:
I started developing lessons related to material used in Beginning Spanish following the chapters from the book Puentes. These are lessons developed with the xMedia Engine, and they can be used following the textbook organization, or individually. The ones already in use are: "Biling^ßismo" (Bilingualism) and "Celia Cruz and Tito Puente". I need more time to develop four more to cover the main issues discussed in the book