HOW ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE BEGINNING SPANISH STUDENTS USE ORAL COMMUNICATION: A DESCRIPTIVE CASE STUDY

Abstract

Communicative language teaching places an emphasis on oral language usage within the L2 classroom, yet although asynchronous online courses can incorporate multimedia, they often rely on written communication. Because there are online asynchronous language courses, and there is a juxtaposition between the communicative language practices and online course delivery, this qualitative descriptive case study explored the main question: How do beginning students use target language oral communication in an asynchronous online beginning Spanish course at a community college? The two subquestions guiding the study were: (a) What are the factors that mediate students’ oral engagement in an asynchronous online beginning Spanish course at a community college? and (b) What are the ways that students demonstrate interpersonal and presentational oral communication in an asynchronous online beginning Spanish course at a community college? This study adopted a qualitative descriptive case study approach and used activity theory and ACTFL guidelines frameworks to frame the study of a 1st semester asynchronous online beginning Spanish course. Content analysis was used to analyze the oral communication assignments of 11 student participants, interviews with 5 focal student participants, and course materials and documents. The findings illuminated the variety of artifacts (tools and signs), their roles, and the role of community in mediating oral communication. Additionally, the findings showed that technology as well as norms can hinder oral communication. The findings also demonstrated types of interpersonal and presentational language that learners produced. Based on the findings, this study highlighted how students learn target language oral communication in an asynchronous online environment. The findings suggest the usage of a variety of artifacts and social interaction with community are important considerations for course design and asynchronous teaching practices. Furthermore, the findings suggest that counter to the belief that teaching oral language mastery is not achievable in online courses, beginning language students in a completely asynchronous online course are capable of producing L2 interpersonal and presentational oral language in alignment with ACTFL novice level proficiency Can-Do statements.