Source: Laura Kanost, 785-532-1931, lakanost@k-state.edu
http://gatosescritores.blogspot.com/
News release prepared by: Megan Wilson, 785-532-6415, media@k-state.edu
Friday, Dec. 14, 2007
K-STATE SPANISH COMPOSITION AND GRAMMAR STUDENTS PUBLISH BLOG IN SPANISH DESCRIBING CAMPUS
MANHATTAN -- A new blog is helping students in Spanish composition and grammar courses at Kansas State University learn more about the language and showcase their campus to Spanish-speaking individuals, too.
Laura Kanost, a visiting assistant professor of Spanish in the department of modern languages at K-State, has had her students publish a blog with descriptions in Spanish of places on campus and in the Manhattan community. Students also wrote content for a new Spanish Web portal for the K-State Volunteer Center of Manhattan on resources for the local Spanish-speaking community.
Kanost said that the idea for the blog came from her desire for students to realize that they can interact with people locally and around the world, even though they have imperfect Spanish.
"My intention was that by publishing their descriptions of local places on a blog, this writing assignment would seem more meaningful to the students," Kanost said. "By publishing it on the Web, they were interacting with Spanish-speaking people from around the world. I also suspected that students would make an extra effort to polish their writing because it would be made public."
Kanost said that before starting the project, she did a search for information in Spanish on Manhattan and K-State and found very little available. She said the students' descriptions of places in the community would provide additional useful information for Spanish-speakers that was not available before. It also would be a gesture of the Manhattan community's interest in communicating in Spanish, she said.
Students practiced different types of writing in Spanish and worked on their Spanish grammar and vocabulary. Students then practiced descriptive writing and completed an assignment describing a place on campus or in the Manhattan area. Students took feedback from Kanost and other students and revised their assignments. After turning in their final assignments, students posted the assignments on the blog, along with photos of the places they were describing.
Improving their Spanish skills was not the only benefit of the project, Kanost said.
"I generally assume that my students know more about technology than I do," she said. "I was surprised that, as it turned out, many of my students had never contributed to a blog before. The technical aspect of publishing their work on the Web was a useful new skill that they acquired through this project."
Students also enjoyed participating in the project.
"I thought the assignment was interesting just because it was different and was something I'd never really done before," said Melissa Krebs, sophomore in pre-professional elementary education, Overland Park. "It was a great way to inform people about all of the attractions that Manhattan has."
The blog is available at http://gatosescritores.blogspot.com/