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La finalidad fundamental de esta obra es dotar al profesor de español como lengua extranjera de los necesarios conocimientos teóricos acerca de la fonética del castellano y de los recursos metodológicos disponibles para afrontar la tarea de enseñar su pronunciación. Pero, además, este es un libro dedicado a indagar, desde dicha perspectiva teórica y aplicada, en los aspectos básicos que conforman, y en gran medida caracterizan, el perfil sonoro del castellano.

La obra está articulada en siete capítulos que abarcan tanto el nivel del análisis fónico suprasegmental como el segmental. Cada capítulo concluye con una serie de ejercicios –cuyas soluciones se ofrecen al final del volumen- y con un conjunto de propuestas de actividades y de temas de reflexión destinados a profundizar en el tema en cuestión. Al final de la obra se incluye, asimismo, un glosario general.

El público ‘natural’ al que va destinado este trabajo es el constituido por profesores de español como lengua extranjera, futuros o en ejercicio, y por estudiantes de los cursos intermedios de filología hispánica. De cualquier modo, pensando también en los posibles lectores profanos en fonética que se acercan por primera vez a la materia, los conceptos fónicos fundamentales se aclaran en nota y en el glosario final.

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In this report, I describe the research and curricular changes I am implementing to deal with issues of inequity encountered by Black students in the Spanish program I direct at Western Michigan University. In the first stage, a comprehensive analysis of student demographics, enrollment, and academic performance over six years revealed that Black and African American students begin Spanish education at high rates but are less likely to advance to courses beyond second-year Spanish and more likely to obtain lower final grades than other groups. These findings are consistent with literature showing similar patterns of participation and achievement among Black students in language learning across secondary and higher education. Following methodologies used in previous studies, the second phase of the project consists of a comprehensive needs analysis composed of surveys, interviews, and class observations aimed at better understanding Black students’ experiences and needs in my department’s Spanish program. Based on results from the needs analysis, the last part of the project will educate personnel in the program on issues of equity and diversity and will implement changes in the curriculum to make our Spanish courses more relevant for Black students. 

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El presente trabajo aborda el tema de la Inteligencia Artificial como una aproximación a un asunto del que ya se está ocupando la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras. Se trata de un tema que es cada vez más importante al ser el efecto del desarrollo que se ha dado en el campo de la cibernética, de la computación y de la comunicación, que produce aplicaciones (apps) que facilitan la vida y ahorran esfuerzo, lo que, al mismo tiempo, lleva a nuevas formas de actuar, de enseñar y de aprender. El desarrollo tecnológico ha estado siempre en la vida de los maestros de lenguas y lo que ocurre en la actualidad no es la excepción. Por ello, surge la necesidad de atender este desarrollo en el campo de la enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera, algo de lo cual ya se ocupan diversas instituciones. Se propone aquí la necesidad de desarrollar herramientas que apoyen a los alumnos en su proceso de aprendizaje y de adquisición del idioma español, como puede ser el caso de las fuentes de consulta actuales como el diccionario Linguee.

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Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of researchers from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and anthropology who seek to understand the mind. In this regular American Educator column, we consider findings from this field that are strong and clear enough to merit classroom application.

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I have read that the mind treats stories differently than other types of information. It seems obvious that people like listening to stories, but it's not obvious how to use that in the classroom. Is it really true that stories are somehow "special" and, if so, how can teachers capitalize on that fact?

Research from the last 30 years shows that stories are indeed special. Stories are easy to comprehend and easy to remember, and that's true not just because people pay close attention to stories; there is something inherent in the story format that makes them easy to understand and remember. Teachers can consider using the basic elements of story structure to organize lessons and introduce complicated material, even if they don't plan to tell a story in class.

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Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of researchers from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and anthropology who seek to understand the mind. In this regular American Educator column, we consider findings from this field that are strong and clear enough to merit classroom application.

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The teacher presents a strong, coherent lesson in which a set of significant facts is clearly connected to a reasonable conclusion. But, at test time, the students show no understanding of the connections. Some students parrot back the conclusion, but no facts. Others spit back memorized facts, but don't see how they fit together. Though the lesson wasn't taught in a rote way, it seems like rote knowledge is what the students took in. Why do well-integrated, coherent lessons often come back to us in a less meaningful, fragmented form? Can cognitive science help explain why this result is so common—and offer ideas about how to avoid it?

Given the immense potential of cognitive linguistics for second language teaching and the need to produce more robust empirical evidence of its effectiveness for a range of learners in real classrooms, the current study set out to investigate the effectiveness of a novel cognitive linguistics-inspired approach for teaching Spanish prepositions and aspect to novice learners (n = 30). Animated videos, which were created collaboratively with students to ensure their comprehensibility, presented Principled Polysemy Networks for the prepositions por and para and the concept of boundedness for aspect (preterite and imperfect). After presentation, practice, and feedback cycles, learners made significant gains on controlled production tasks and performed as well as more advanced learners recruited in prior studies, suggesting that the cognitive linguistics approach was effective for these novices. The study found no statistically significant correlations between learning outcomes and individual difference measures of executive function, working memory, motivation, or learning style, which was cautiously interpreted as suggesting that the applied cognitive linguistics approach benefited all learners, not just a subset with particular abilities.