This paper describes the experiences of 15 students who reported on their study habits and studying of Spanish outside of the classroom during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when suddenly face-to-face classes had to be delivered remotely. The paper features the voices of eight teachers on how they promoted out-of-class learning. The inquiry took the form of a small-scale qualitative case study with beginner learners of Spanish and Spanish teachers at a language centre. The aim was to explore how students studied Spanish independently after their synchronous live classes by making use of some additional resources recommended by their teachers. Therefore, this paper attempts to look at how students made use of such resources and if they benefited from them. Data for this study were retrieved from an open-ended survey administered to three groups of Spanish students and a focus group interview with eight Spanish teachers. The emerging findings of the study suggest that although students engaged with additional materials, much work is needed in this context to raise more awareness and promote more learner engagement and exploration outside of the classroom.
This special issue of SiSAL Journal features papers from the last Research Network on Learner Autonomy (ReNLA) Symposium. The most recent Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée (or International Association of Applied Linguistics/ AILA) Congress took place in August 2021.
In this paper, I discuss a small-scale case study that explores the important role teachers play in promoting out-of-class learning among their students. Data come from in-depth interviews with three of the teachers who delivered a Spanish for specific purposes blended course. I explored the different ways in which these teachers went about encouraging students to engage with the online segment of the course. The study is mainly informed by the notion of affordances (Cotterall, 2017; Murray, 2017; van Lier, 2004) and the growing body of literature on learning beyond the classroom (LBC) (Benson, 2011; Reinders & Benson, 2017; Reinders, 2020) where teachers play a pivotal role in promoting out-of-class learning. The main takeaway from this study is that for teachers to promote out-of-class learning, they should first identify the learning possibilities available in whatever materials students are to use outside of the classroom. In the case of this study, teachers had to promote the use of the learning platform that students were supposed to engage with as part of their out-of-class learning segment of the course. However, I found that only one teacher fully promoted out-of-class learning simply because she saw value in the platform and was able to help students see such value as well. The opposite was also true; the other two teachers did not seem to see much value in the platform and as a result, they were not entirely successful in promoting out-of-class learning among their students.
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