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Computers in the Bilingual Classroom: A Conversation

Laurita Moore-Diaz teaches Spanish and Computer courses at SMCC. What follows is a casual conversation we held about her use of the Internet and computers in general as well as issues for her Spanish-speaking students.

Alan: How long have you been teaching at SMCC?

Laurita: I moved from administration to teaching four years ago and I truly love teaching. I teach computer information systems and Spanish.

Alan: What specific courses are you teaching now?

Laurita: I'm teaching Spanish 101, 102, 201, 202. It's a lot of fun. The two computer classes I teach are the basic BPC 110, the university transfer class, and the Internet course. One of the things that has been exciting for me as a bilingual computer teacher is I've been able to mainstream the ESL students before they finish their English classes. That's been very rewarding. Instead of having to wait two full years before they can take any university-level classes, they are able to take the BPC 110 or the Internet class. They have to know some English because most of the materials are in English, but they are able to speak to me and ask me questions in Spanish, have their questions answered in Spanish and write their journals in Spanish. It's very rewarding to be able to move them through the process a little quicker and it tends to hold on to them much better. Our retention rate is better with students we can mainstream.

Alan: Do you have any students who have come back and talked to you about how their computer experiences have helped them?

Laurita: Yes, students come to me for recommendations. All are in situations where they have to use the computer and some are even pursuing careers in computers.

Alan: What kind of challenges have you met in teaching in a bilingual environment?

Laurita: The main challenge for the ESL students is that the textbook is in English. One of the interesting things is that with computers the nuances of the language are very, very important. For example, sometimes a little word like "as" in a computer instruction can make a huge difference in the way the computer behaves. So it really helps them learn English much better because they have to really understand these nuances in order to get the computer to do the instruction correctly. And, they also learn that the computer is not very smart and if there is something the computer is looking for, it has to be exactly that way; there can't be any typos or extra spaces and so the students learn to be much more precise.

Alan: Are there any particular terms or concepts that are a real challenge to non-native English speakers?

Laurita: I base my class very heavily on the ability to read, understand and follow instructions, as opposed to the actual computer skills. Primarily because technology is constantly changing and whatever technology I teach them today, is not necessarily going to be the technology of tomorrow. But I do find that the one skill that goes from decade to decade is the ability to read, understand and follow instructions. With computers, that seems all important because computers are basically nothing but a set of instructions. Software and computers come with instruction manuals and sometimes tutorials.

What students need to learn are the skills of reading, understanding and following instructions and sometimes very precisely. If they can do that, they'll be successful with our ever-changing technology. For example, if I'm teaching non-relational database skills, as soon as they have to operate a relational database, they'll need some new skills. If they know how to read, understand and follow instructions, it won't be a major problem for them because they will know how to get the new information they need.

Alan: Several of your students are creating web pages. Would you talk a little about what that experience has been like?

Laurita: I was teaching the Internet course and it became apparent early on that students were hungry to create web pages, so I adopted your MCLI tutorial on Writing HTML http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/ and the students have great fun with it. They enjoy doing the tutorial, and they enjoy creating their pages. It unleashes their creativity. Students get to express themselves in ways they can't in other classes. Even though I try to bring in a creative outlet in all my classes, I've never seen anything that comes even close to what the tutorial and web pages do.

Alan: We've talked before about this issue of students who say "I want to write in Spanish but my keyboard doesn't have the right characters and the software's not really appropriate." Is that a continuing problem?

Laurita: Yes, that's really held me back from doing more Internet work with my Spanish Class. I'm one of those teachers who think that accents are important. A word with an accent and without an accent has two completely different meanings. Native speakers, in particular, have difficulty with accents and they are what often makes the difference for the student to be able to get a job that requires business Spanish. After I go through all the work of teaching the importance of the accent, I don't want to put students on a tool that unteaches them its importance. The reality is that even on the Web, if we look at the lowest common denominator of technology that most people have, it is still going to be accentless.

Alan: What is your dream software to overcome this? Is it more than just a keyboard with the appropriate characters built in rather than having to type special sequences?

Laurita: Well, I'm not sure it's just the keyboard. I may at some point "cave in" and let my students "loose" on the Net because I want them to have the experience of exchanging with somebody in another country. But when we're dealing in an international environment, with world economy rather than Maricopa economy, there are some issues to consider. In Maricopa we're very blessed, because of the bond election, to be able to afford technology to provide access to software like Netscape which can support various languages. But in just basic e-mail or chat mode, which are the lowest common technology, the foreign language diacritics are not supported. A great number of people on the Internet, worldwide, are still in VT100 mode and often that is the common denominator that programs are written to.

Alan: You've had your Spanish students in the computer room for one semester now. How are they reacting?

Laurita: The pretty picture is that students love it. They used to have to do exercises in the book, turn them in and wait for me to grade them. I became a grading machine rather than a teacher. I would always get behind in my grading and they wouldn't get very quick feedback. The students love doing the exercises on the computer plus the computer does the correcting and they get immediate feedback. The computer actively involves the students in kinesthetic learning which I find is the most powerful learning mode for most students.

But there is a down side to technology. Technology is constantly changing and every time we introduce something new we have to go through the debugging process and students feel the process. My Spanish courses are competency based to insure they have extremely strong skills when they go on to ASU. I discovered that the software that comes with the textbook only covers part of the competencies so I'm using two different software packages. The two packages aren't totally compatible and that's been difficult for everyone. The students sometimes hurt a bit during the debugging.

Another example is that for 20 years I've been hearing about the paperless office. Well, last semester I decided I was going to create the paperless classroom for BPC110 and I had all my students turn their work in on the server. They didn't ever have to print their work. They turned it in on the server, I graded it, and sent it back to them on the server. However, it really didn't work because of all of the protection needed to keep files secure and the difficulty synchronizing new and graded files. Others may have some ideas to make it work more smoothly but for now, although I haven't gone all the way back to paper, they are turning in diskettes. We all went through a bit of pain while I tried this technology non-solution.

Overall, it's very stimulating to work in such a dynamic environment. There's "never a dull moment." There is always something new to try to make the learning environment more and more effective.

Post Script:

URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/labyforum/Spr96/spr96L4.html