Building Community and Posting Projects: Creating “Student Pages” in Web‐Based and Web‐Enhanced Courses

Abstract

The author presents pedagogical arguments for integrating web‐based student pages into intermediate‐ and upper‐level foreign language courses. She shows how web‐based student pages used for community‐building activities and the presentation of culture projects contribute to meeting the five C's — Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities — as they are outlined in the 1996 ACTFL Standards for Foreign Language Learning. Based on the author's experience with web‐based student pages in an online German course, this article offers models that can be applied in both web‐based and web‐enhanced foreign language courses.

Beyond the Language‐Content Divide: Research on Advanced Foreign Language Instruction at the Postsecondary Level

“…This “dialogic reading technique” (p. 776) provides students with text‐based cultural viewpoints that encourage critical interpretation and analysis through identification of cultural contradictions and complexity. A second Standards‐based perspective on culture focused on a Web‐based contemporary German culture class that highlights communication, connections, and communities (McGee, ). The author argued that weaving cultural content into the creation of Web pages allows students to communicate through interpretive and presentational mode tasks, make connections with other students and disciplines, and tap into target language communities.…”