Hello All,
I am intrigued by TBL, but am having difficulty seeing its applications in
the two of the types of classes I teach. I took a seminar in December and
am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the _Team Based Learning_ book, which
will perhaps answer some of my questions.
In the meantime,
1. Is there anyone who has successfully used TBL in a foreign-language
classroom for teaching either beginning or intermediate language? If so,
how did you organize your course (organize units, assignments, discussion,
etc.)? I’ve been teaching language courses for over 15 years, so I’m
really having a difficult time letting go of old strategies, even though I
want to adopt new ones. As an aside, this class is taught four days a week.
2. Alternately, I want to use TBL in a “fourth-year” survey of Latin
American Literature course. I put “fourth year” in quotation marks, because
even thought the course is a fourth-year course, there is no guarantee that
students will necessarily have completed third-year courses in preparation
for this course. This class is taught twice a week for 75 minutes each. We
will be reading from an anthology, _Voces hispanoamericanas_, and will also
be reading two novels. As with the issue in question 1, I’m having trouble
letting go of old strategies as I formulate the class (i.e. lecture based
rather than team based). We will be focusing on several aspects:
comprehension of literary texts, introduce the student to some of the major
Latin American authors, the study of literary genres within an historical
context, devices and techniques used by authors, and lastly, familiarization
with literary analysis (close reading and application of critical theory).
-Can anyone suggest:
---any application exercises that might be useful in either setting?
---designing the class around problems rather than just feeding them information
---techniques that you have found useful in testing
Any suggestions that anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Cecilia Ryan
Assistant Professor of Spanish
Arkansas Tech University
116 Dean Hall
Russellville AR 72801
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