Retooling Study Abroad: Digital Approaches to Linguistic and Cultural Immersion 1793654581, 9781793654588

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Retooling Study Abroad

Retooling Study Abroad Digital Approaches to Linguistic and Cultural Immersion Carmen Granda

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Granda, Carmen, 1983- author. Title: Retooling study abroad : digital approaches to linguistic and cultural immersion / Carmen Granda. Description: Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023039515 (print) | LCCN 2023039516 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793654588 (cloth : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781793654595 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Foreign study. | Student exchange programs. | Blended learning. | Web-based instruction. | Internet in higher education | Social media in education. | Language and languages—Study and teaching. | Multicultural education. Classification: LCC LB2375 .G73 2023  (print) | LCC LB2375  (ebook) | DDC 370.116—dc23/eng/20230925 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023039515 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023039516 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To my parents

Contents

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Immersive Learning through Digital Tools



Chapter One: Re-creating Study Abroad through Digital Maps

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Chapter Two: Teaching Language and Culture through Social Media

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Chapter Three: Using Telecollaboration to Promote Linguistic and Cultural Proficiency

121

Conclusion: Reverse Culture Shock

163



Appendices

173

Bibliography

185

Index

197

About the Author



205

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List of Figures

Figure 2.1 Student Response to Garcilaso de la Vega “Soneto XXIII” 101 Figure 2.2 Frost Library at Amherst College



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Figure 2.3 Newport House, Residence Hall, Amherst College Figure 2.4 Student Instagram Response to #donjuan

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106 113

Acknowledgments

At various points in the book, I stress the value of professional support from an Information Technology (IT) department to achieve innovative pedagogy. At Amherst College, I am fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate with IT and Academic Technology Services (ATS). As a subgroup of IT, ATS works with faculty, instructional staff, and students to enhance teaching, learning, and research through the integration of technology. Due to the nature of their job, which often takes place behind the scenes, these individuals are often overlooked. Without the IT department, especially the ATS team at Amherst, I would not have developed into the scholar and instructor I am today, so I would like to first thank them here. In July 2014, a month before my first semester at Amherst, Bridget Dahill, who at the time worked for ATS, sent me an email asking if I needed support from IT for my teaching and research. She offered to meet with me to provide an overview of technology resources and facilities, as well as to explain the general workings of the IT department at Amherst. Since that initial email, I have met many times with Bridget and our professional relationship has transformed into a friendship. She has become someone with whom I can share ideas. Chapter 1 (digital maps) and Chapter 2 (social media) are a product of these informal conversations. I credit Bridget for sparking my curiosity in digital tools before I set foot on Amherst’s campus. Although I enjoy using technology in the classroom and have been known to use more complex digital tools, seemingly simpler technology can stump me. I am grateful to Asha Kinney for patiently answering all my Moodle-related questions, especially the ones that I ask repeatedly. I am also thankful for her support. Whenever I want to explore a new digital tool, Asha responds enthusiastically to my requests and is eager to either discover the tool together or assist me in my quest. As much as I appreciate technology, I sometimes do not have the time to study a tool in-depth. I am immensely grateful to Kara McGillicuddy for stepping in on those occasions and organizing thorough and engaging in-class xi

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workshops on different digital tools, like Canva. Kara’s passion for technology is contagious. Her background in graphic design has been invaluable, not only for my students, but also for me. I especially appreciate Kara’s attention to accessibility. My students’ infographics on food sustainability in Spanishspeaking countries, described in Chapter 3, came out incredible thanks to Kara’s guidance. I look forward to future collaborations. Not only do I have limited time, but I occasionally lack the technical jargon to explain to my students how to do what I want them to do clearly and concisely. I extend many thanks to Pete Marvin, in multimedia services, for meeting with my students and me countless times over the years and explaining how to use the most effective tool(s) for my tech projects in a way that we can understand. His professional in-class workshops contribute to students’ successful projects, some of which are described in this book. Finally, many thanks to Jaya Kannan, director of technology for curriculum and research at Amherst, for her ongoing support. Meeting with her leaves me feeling reinvigorated to dive into projects and explore new digital tools. As I mention in the book several times, incorporating technology in the classroom should be purposeful. I owe a special thanks to my two instructors in the graduate certificate program at the University of Colorado, Boulder (at the time): Edwige Simon and Anne Becher. Their online courses on second language acquisition and emerging digital tools and practices were crucial to my growth as a scholar in this field. None of these projects could be possible without the continuous support of the Spanish department at Amherst College. I am particularly grateful to Sara Brenneis, Paul Schroeder-Rodríguez, and Ilan Stavans, who have encouraged me to pursue this book project and have supported my creative ideas since day one. I am privileged to work in an institution that values pedagogy and to form part of a department that recognizes the hard work and talent of its lecturers. By giving me the flexibility to design innovative course projects— all of which are described in the book—I have grown exponentially as a language instructor and scholar. A Dean’s Research Fellowship during Fall 2022 at Amherst provided significant time to write much of this book. Besides teaching at Amherst, I have worked several years as the study abroad liaison for the Spanish department. In this role, I met regularly with Janna Behrens, associate dean/director of the Global Education Office at Amherst. During these meetings, often with study abroad program directors from all over the world, I learned more about the study abroad industry. This experience was invaluable and contributed to my professional interest in the topic. I am also fortunate to work directly in the study abroad field. At Amherst, I teach a short-term study abroad course on the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James) that includes a travel component at the end of the semester.

Acknowledgments

xiii

The past eight summers, I have been the on-site director and an instructor for Brown University’s Pre-College program in Segovia, Spain. Many thanks to Amherst College and Rosario Navarro at Brown University for these opportunities. These experiences have given me a better understanding of the ins and outs of studying abroad, particularly all the work that goes on behind the scenes to make a study abroad program run smoothly. Along these lines, special thanks to my colleague and friend, Elena Lledó, for making Segovia feel like home for two weeks every summer. At Lexington Books, I have been fortunate to work with Holly Buchanan, Sara Noakes, and Meaghan Menzel. Their support and encouragement of this project means the world to me. I thank the anonymous peer reviewer for their careful reading and thoughtful suggestions, which helped make this book stronger. Special thanks to the index editor, Marisa Antonaya, as well. I extend my thanks to Todd Nichols, CEO of TalkAbroad, for letting me interview him over Zoom in July 2021. Our conversation was enlightening: I not only learned about the hiring process for conversation speakers, but we also exchanged ideas on how to design engaging TalkAbroad assignments for students of all levels—some of which appear in Chapter 3 (food sustainability and anti-racism). All of the projects described in this book took place at Amherst College. In large part, I attribute their success to my students. Whether it be familiarizing themselves with a Spanish-speaking country via a virtual map, using social media to build community and learn culture, or speaking to native Spanish speakers online, Amherst students embraced the challenge enthusiastically. They are hardworking, open to new ideas, and imaginative. Their creativity exceeded my expectations, and I am so proud to include several examples of their projects in this book. Special thanks to Sophia Maldonado ‘20 and Deborah (DJ) Williams ‘20 for allowing me to publish their original photos (Chapter 2, Figure 2.1 and Figure 2.4). Two Amherst College students in particular, Reid Dodson ‘24 and Olivia Fajardo ‘23, Gregory S. Call research interns, went above and beyond by assisting me with the editing of this book. Both avid travelers and language enthusiasts, they also shared ideas and personal experiences that strengthened the book’s overall argument. With new technology coming out every day, it is challenging to keep up with the latest tools, apps, and trends. Numerous conversations with Adriel Roncal ‘21 opened my eyes to the use of social media among young adults to promote books and reading, like #BookTube, which is mentioned in Chapter 2. ¡Gracias! I am immensely grateful to Kenneth Conrade, who instilled a love for languages in me many years ago and believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. Since high school, he has been a role model for me, both

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Acknowledgments

professionally and personally, and has always supported my work. I would also like to extend my deepest appreciation to Antonio Carreño who took me under his wing during my MA at Middlebury and encouraged me to think outside the box while deciphering early modern Spanish literature. Creativity now plays an important role in my own Spanish courses. I would not be where I am today without his guidance. I owe a special thanks to my friends, especially Chad Leahy and Jorge Terukina, for answering my endless questions, sharing advice, offering input, and believing in me all these years. I also appreciate Phoebe Porter and Donald Joralemon’s friendship at Amherst and their support throughout the book-writing process. I am also indebted to Valentine Balguerie for pushing me toward the finish line of this book project. Merci! Most of this book was written during the pandemic, a time of isolation, but thanks to technology, family and friends always felt close. Big thanks to my brothers, José and Santiago, Derek Ettensohn, Arturo Márquez-Gómez, Vanessa Ehler, Jennifer Tanner, Jamie Billings, Fiona Dixon, Salman Aasi, Alisa Linarejos, Sarah Piazza, and others from my Middlebury, Brown, and Amherst family who provided much-needed breaks and laughter over the phone and on Zoom these past two years. I am especially grateful to Martín and the Luján-Vallejo family for their kindness and love. Finally, I dedicate this book to my parents. For loving me and supporting my goals, my life has been a dream come true.

Introduction Immersive Learning through Digital Tools

STUDY ABROAD DURING COVID-19 Study abroad is a bustling industry that attracts thousands of undergraduates every year, and, over the last two decades, the field has changed dramatically. Enrollment in a study abroad program at the university level is nearly three times what it was in the mid-1990s, with approximately 350,000 U.S. students abroad during the 2018–2019 academic year (Institute of International Education 2000). This significant increase in numbers stems from changes to the study abroad curricula and to the structure of these programs. Decades ago, programs followed a more traditional model that was limited to language and literary studies. Meanwhile, today’s study abroad programs offer more diverse, interdisciplinary fields. For example, a STEM student can spend a semester in the Galapagos Islands doing field work—an opportunity that was inconceivable in the past. This overseas research may transform into a thesis or larger project during senior year, making the opportunity to study abroad even more unique and attractive to undergraduates. Today’s study abroad programs combine language with culture in a meaningful and interdisciplinary way. This experience develops students’ linguistic proficiency and cross-cultural competency and contributes to their personal growth. Despite these benefits, scholars have questioned the value of study abroad, perhaps hinting at a flaw: is the traditional study abroad model truly providing students with opportunities to achieve cross-cultural competence and advanced language proficiency? Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted study abroad programs and instructors to reimagine the traditional model and curriculum, and reconsider what immersion looks like in and outside of the classroom. One purported benefit to studying abroad is cross-cultural awareness. Many students gain a better understanding of their own and other countries’ cultural differences, contributing to their personal growth (increased 1

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self-awareness, patience, flexibility, etc.) (Dwyer 2004). The level of students’ personal growth, however, depends on numerous characteristics, like motivation (Isabelli-García 2002), duration of study (Engle and Engle 2003) and contact with native speakers. These factors make it challenging to measure a student’s growth quantitatively. While students often return from their time abroad claiming that the experience has transformed them, there is little, if any, substantive evidence to support this idea. These self-reports are purely anecdotal. Many times, when faculty ask returning students to elaborate on their transformations, students share vague reasons, causing instructors to question the value of their students’ time abroad. Although some students benefit from the intensive experience of studying abroad, others do not put in the time and effort necessary for personal growth. As John Burness, a visiting professor at Duke University, described in an essay in the Chronicle of Education (2009), “the study abroad experience, in many cases, is not all it should or could be” (as cited in Vande Berg, Paige, and Hemming Lou 2012, 6–7). Many of today’s students equate study abroad to vacation, spending most of their time behaving like tourists, traveling to nearby destinations instead of exploring their country of study, and engaging in inappropriate behavior. Recent reports note a significant increase in “high-risk drinking behaviors,” or binge drinking by U.S. students abroad (Aresi et al., 2016), supporting the idea that study abroad is a “semester off” (Burness as cited in Vande Berg, Paige, and Hemming Lou 2012, 6–7) and truly “not all it should be.” Adding to instructors’ concerns regarding the extent of student growth abroad, research on study abroad programs’ effect on student learning, specifically on language proficiency, has produced inconsistent results. While some studies on language acquisition demonstrate that L2 students (those studying a second language) who study abroad seem to make only modest improvements in their language proficiency (Collentine and Freed 2004; Freed 1995; Segalowitz et al. 2004) and cultural learning (Paige, Cohen, and Shively 2004; Vande Berg and Paige 2009; Vande Berg, Connor-Lington and Paige 2009) (Vande Berg, Paige, and Hemming Lou 2012, 5) based on exam scores, others claim that study abroad has significant linguistic benefits: [Students] speak with greater ease and confidence, expressed in part by a greater abundance of speech, spoken at a faster rate and characterized by fewer dysfluency-sounding pauses. [They] . . . display a wider range of communicative strategies and a broader repertoire of styles . . . and their linguistic identities extend beyond the expected acquisition of oral skills to a new self-realization in the social world of literacy. (Freed 1998, 50)

Introduction

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For scholars, like Barbara Freed, when students use the target language outside of the classroom, they grow more confident in speaking, relying on different communicative strategies like circumlocution, to get their point across. Daily exposure to the language can also significantly improve students’ listening skills. Finally, for some students, studying abroad challenges the perception of their identity, leading to personal growth. In general, “study abroad program recruitment literature depicts the overseas experience as a shortcut to linguistic fluency and cross-cultural understanding” (Wilkinson 1998, 23). For decades, administrators and faculty have put study abroad on a pedestal: if students travel, they will be immersed in the language and culture, and automatically learn on their own, with little effort and become fluent. This way of passively experiencing language and culture is not learning; in fact, it is more than likely not to lead to full-on language acquisition. It is not enough to physically transport oneself to a new place; one must also devote a significant amount of effort and time to fully understand a language and culture. Programs need to support students as well by designing effective training courses throughout the study abroad experience so that students can achieve their goals of fluency and cultural awareness (Wilkinson 1998, 21). Regardless of the numerous claims in support of or opposition to studying abroad, such an experience is not always possible. Financial restraints, academic scheduling, family obligations and concerns, and other reasons often make study abroad infeasible. Low income and minority students, in particular, are typically most affected (Wanger et al. 2020, 3). According to a NAFSA (2019) study, “Trends in Study Abroad,” minority students have a significantly lower participation rate in study abroad than white students. In 2016–2017, about three-quarters of students who studied abroad identified as white. Meanwhile, African Americans constitute 13% of the college student population in the United States, and only 6.1% (less than half) of these students traveled abroad (NAFSA, 2019). Similarly, of the Latine/Hispanic students, who represent 18% of the population in higher education, only 10% studied abroad (Longmire-Avital, 2019). Circumstances beyond students’ control, like a pandemic, may also make travel plans difficult, if not impossible. COVID-19 greatly affected higher education. While university instructors scrambled to modify their lesson plans and learn how to use Zoom in March 2020, study abroad programs completely shut down, sending students home to complete their classes virtually. According to a 2020 Institute of International Education COVID19 survey, in which 285 institutions participated, 22,041 students studied abroad in spring 2020. Approximately 17,787 students (81%) from 253 of those 285 institutions were evacuated (Institute of International Education, 2020). Frustrated by the sudden change in their plans, students returned home

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to complete their coursework, feeling “robbed of a life-changing event” (Di Giovine and Bodinger de Uriarte 2022, 328). Students were not only upset that they were missing out on an immersive learning experience, but also because they had to cancel travel plans, say goodbye to new friends, and manage growing financial concerns during the pandemic and beyond (Pedersen et al. 2022, 79–80). In a report on the experiences of study abroad students from the United States during the beginning months of the pandemic, one student described her frustration: “Coronavirus took this opportunity away from me so quickly, and I will never get it back. I am unsure if I will ever be able to afford to return to Europe in the future” (Pedersen et al. 2022, 79–80). Equally difficult was the psychological and economic hardship that the pandemic caused on study abroad faculty and staff, many of whom were furloughed (Di Giovine and Bodinger de Uriarte 2022, 331). For almost a year and a half, study abroad remained uncertain and its future looked bleak. Rising to the unique challenge presented by the coronavirus, some study abroad programs reinvented themselves. Gareth Barkin, professor at the University of Puget Sound, cultural anthropologist, and advocate for virtual study abroad, shares: The coronavirus experience compelled me (and, I imagine, many others involved in this field) to approach the same discussion from a juxtaposed perspective, focusing on what pedagogical goals and outcomes associated with study abroad might be achieved (or at least approached) through other means— means that remain available to us when travel is no longer an option. (As cited in Di Giovine and Bodinger de Uriarte 2022, 336)

During the pandemic, modern language departments and study abroad programs were forced to critically reassess their curriculum and develop innovative ways to bring the linguistic and cultural experience of study abroad into their classroom. With travel no longer feasible in Fall 2020, some study abroad programs turned to online learning, relying on Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms to offer virtual classes, internships, and extracurricular activities to students. Other programs and models, which existed before the pandemic, like SUNY COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning), flourished. COIL allows for a U.S. classroom to connect with a university class abroad, creating a “blended, virtual partnership” (Di Giovine and Bodinger de Uriarte 2022, 336), that unites students from different countries and cultures online. Like university instructors who had to quickly change to online teaching, study abroad programs had to adapt to the challenging situation, reassess their objectives and create a new model if they wanted to thrive during the pandemic.

Introduction

5

Although these online offerings were effective during the coronavirus pandemic, they did not and cannot fully replace the traditional study abroad experience that entails physical travel to a destination. Several recent studies reveal that the majority of students attribute their personal and intellectual growth during the pandemic to their virtual study abroad experience, but they also recognize that this study abroad experience was not real (Santiso and Sanz 2022, 45). Nothing can replace the physical act of speaking Spanish with a friend at a café, visiting an art museum, and taking the train to school. For some scholars, real study abroad entails mobility, traveling outside of one’s home for a temporary period of time to live in a new place (Breglia 2022, 347). Without this physical displacement, a high-impact transformative experience is unlikely. In 2022, almost three years since colleges and universities shut down due to the pandemic, study abroad programs slowly opened their doors again. The future of the industry, however, remains uncertain. Specifically, will student interest in studying abroad wane due to safety and security concerns, growing financial constraints, and other issues? In their epilogue to Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience (2021), Michael A. Di Giovine and John Bodinger de Uriarte suggest that study abroad programs diversify their offerings, keeping in mind those students who may not have the financial means, time, ability, or willingness to travel abroad (336). Echoing these two scholars, Amelia J. Dietrich, senior director for research and publications at The Forum on Education Abroad and managing editor of Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, in a reflective piece on the future of study abroad, encourages the study abroad industry to use the pandemic to “[t]hink expansively . . . to prepare for the reinvention of this field” (2020, 8). Dietrich ends the article with an insightful question: “How can we blend the virtual and the in person, the local and the global, in more meaningful ways that will serve us long after borders reopen?” (2020, 8). Using Di Giovine and Bodinger de Uriarte’s call to expand the curriculum and Dietrich’s emphasis on technology as points of departure for this book I aim to shift the responsibility of world language instruction from study abroad programs to faculty who teach languages and content courses in the home institution. If virtual study abroad is not ideal and physical travel is unguaranteed, which digital tools and activities can university instructors use to immerse students in the language and culture from their home university, either due to unexpected circumstances, like a pandemic, or as part of their students’ overall preparation for future in-person study abroad and advancement in the major?

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STUDY ABROAD AND THE 5 CS In order to create an immersive classroom space for students, world language instructors should first consider the objectives, necessary tools, and the training required for such a task. First published in 1996 by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), in collaboration with national language-specific organizations, the World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages are a roadmap to describe what students need to know and be able to do in order to communicate effectively and interact with cultural competence in and outside of the classroom. They are also referred to as the 5 Cs since they are organized into five goals: Communication, Cultures, Comparisons, Connections, and Communities. For this book, I will focus on Communication, Cultures, and Communities, but the other two, Connections and Comparisons, will appear as well since all 5 Cs are interconnected. Communication is one of the most obvious goals in a language classroom for both students and instructors. Students primarily choose to study a language to become fluent. Although learning to communicate through writing, reading, listening, and speaking appears to be straightforward, the definition of communication is more complex. Maris Hawkins and Florencia Henshaw, authors of Common Ground: Second Language Acquisition Theory Goes to the Classroom (2021), break down several interpretations of communication and share their own concise definition that aligns well with the scope of this book: “[Communication is] the purposeful interpretation and/or expression of meaning” (2022, 6). To determine whether an activity involves communication, they recommend that instructors consider the following two questions: What information or content is being conveyed? What will the audience do with the information? (2022, 6) In the classroom, communication must have a clear purpose and be meaningful. Filling in the missing song lyrics, for instance, is not true communication since students can complete the activity without understanding the meaning of the words or the song’s overall message. True communication is also not asking classmates prefabricated questions about their daily routine and filling out a chart with responses. Instead, students can first read several statements about daily routine and determine if it is true or false based on their own life. Then, they can create original questions using these statements as a model. Students should take notes and ask follow-up questions that elaborate on their peers’ answers. At the end of the activity, the instructor can compile students’ answers on the board to see if there are similarities or differences in the class (Hawkins and Henshaw 2021, 22–23). This activity transforms the original exercise (chart) into something meaningful, useful, and interesting that engages the entire class. Designing activities that encapsulate these two goals of communication at the home

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institution is more challenging than while abroad, where meaningful communication occurs frequently, just from going about daily life. Studying abroad is an important step in students’ language learning journey. It is usually the first time that they apply their language skills in an authentic, real-life setting: they order coffee at a café, ask for directions to the nearest metro stop, and attend a soccer match, all in the target language. Despite the difficulty in simulating these experiences at home, it can be done. In courses at the home institution, students hone their language skills by reading the news, writing daily blogs, listening to podcasts, and talking to classmates and their instructor in the target language. These tasks target four skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and instructors can assess them using the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. In 1996, the Word Readiness Standards shifted the emphasis from these four skills and focused on the context and purpose of the communication. Performance descriptors help instructors understand how language learners perform, acting as a roadmap for teaching and learning. The descriptors help teachers create tasks targeted to the appropriate range of performance (Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced). The performance descriptors are also organized according to the three modes of communication: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational. Below are brief descriptions of each of the modes: Interpretive • Understand, analyze, and interpret meaningful content (written, aural, visual, or graphic). Presentational • Convey meaningful information for a given purpose to a particular audience. Interpersonal • Interact with an interlocutor to exchange meaningful information for a given purpose, either synchronously (in real time) or asynchronously (not in real time) (Henshaw and Hawkins 2022, 8–10). To determine performance, different measures are employed: function (the different tasks the learner can perform in the language), context and content (the situations and topics the learner can cover in the language), and text type (the level of language that the learner can understand and communicate). Performance is also based on the student’s overall ability to be understood and to understand others, which is measured by language control, vocabulary, communication strategies, and cultural awareness. Combining these measures with the corresponding mode of communication is what defines performance. For example, the following cases can determine if a student’s performance level falls within the Intermediate range: the

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ability to ask, understand, and answer questions (i.e., the ability to interact) is a function within interpersonal mode that is a hallmark for the Intermediate range; for the interpretive mode, a key function is to comprehend main ideas and identify some supporting details (i.e., reading and listening); and, for the presentational mode, an essential function is the ability to present information by creation—that is, the student could share their thoughts and ideas through speaking and/or writing. The three modes of communication are not linear; they can build on each other, allowing students to strengthen their language skills (Henshaw and Hawkins 2021, 9). Since input, the comprehensible language that learners are exposed to while listening or reading, is so important for acquisition, it is recommended that instructors start their lessons with interpretive reading and listening tasks, especially when teaching those within the Novice range since this will help build their vocabulary. The more input that students at the beginner level receive, the easier it will be for them to complete interpersonal and presentational tasks. Since the 5 Cs are interconnected (as established at the start of this section), communication is not the only C needed to reach communicative competence; in fact, the other four Cs are crucial because they provide the vehicle through which communication takes place. The Cultures standard, the second C, plays an essential role in world language teaching, opening a space for the kind of communicative competence that goes beyond the control of specific linguistic structures. To truly learn a language, students must not only learn verb conjugations and grammar rules, but also culture. Culture is commonly understood as a body of knowledge that people have or obtain about a particular society, which often includes understanding important places, events, symbols, and cultural artifacts of that society. Textbooks perpetuate this definition of culture by dedicating 1–2 pages to cultural tidbits: tortilla española is made with potatoes and eggs; Oswaldo Guayasamín’s work poignantly documents human experiences of both suffering and love; tango comes from Argentina. Although brief, this information can spark students’ interest and motivate them to continue studying the language and culture. However, culture is more than a body of knowledge: it is a framework by which people live their lives and communicate shared meanings with one another. The main goal of communicative language teaching is to provide learners with meaningful interactions. Therefore, it is necessary to teach students about the culture, or cultures, associated with their target language so they can meet their communicative goals (Canale and Swain 1980). Culture stands as the context for language production and represents a driving force in the language classroom. According to H. Douglas Brown (2001), students exposed to the culture associated with their target language can better engage themselves in a meaningful way. Brown describes the interrelatedness of language and culture stating, “one cannot separate the two

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without losing the significance of either language or culture. The acquisition of a second language [. . .], is also the acquisition of a second culture” (2007, 189–190). Additionally, studying culture gives meaning to the study of a second language, and thus culture learning can motivate language learning. In a Novice or an Intermediate language course at the college level, learning about different cultures through language could become a driving force in deciding to study abroad and declaring a major. Indeed, a trip abroad will give students the opportunity to speak the language, and to see with their own eyes all the monuments, cathedrals, and ancient ruins, which they may only have seen in textbooks or online previously. Language learners who gain certain cultural knowledge can also develop more positive, empathetic, and inclusive attitudes toward cultures outside of their own. They can better understand their own culture by increasing their intercultural awareness. This is fundamental because it is important for students to understand how their own culture shapes perceptions of themselves, the world, and their relationship with others. In the world language classroom, culture becomes the vehicle through which students study the language and learn more about themselves and others. The Cultures goal is presented as the philosophical perspectives, the behavioral practices, and the products of a society. Students must “demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied” (National Standards, 2015). This “Cultural Framework,” sometimes referred to as the “3 Ps,” is often depicted as a triangle with “Perspectives” at the top and “Products” and “Practices” forming the base. This triangular representation shows how the products and practices are derived from the perspectives that form the world view of a cultural group (Cutshall April 2012, 33). This schema also demonstrates the fact that these three components of culture are closely related. In brief, the 3 Ps are: Products • Both tangible and intangible items required or justified by the underlying beliefs and values of that culture, so this could be books, foods, and dress. Practices • Patterns of social interactions or behaviors accepted by a society, such as rites of passage, and use of forms of discourse. Perspectives • Representing that culture’s view of the world, including meanings, attitudes, values, and ideas. Within the Cultures framework, there are two standards. The first standard focuses on understanding cultural practices and the perspectives revealed

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through these practices, and the second emphasizes understanding the products of a culture and the perspectives that are revealed through these products. When designing activities and projects in the home institution with the purpose of immersing students in the target language and culture, teaching students about the first P (product) is essential and, at the same time, challenging. Language textbooks frequently reserve the last pages of the chapter to highlight different “products”—mate, bachata, the siku—typical of certain countries where the language is spoken. Sometimes, textbooks will elaborate further on “products,” but these cultural blurbs often perpetuate stereotypes, which does more harm than good. They may briefly introduce a “practice,” but these are also limiting. A Spanish textbook chapter, for example, could focus on food. The end of the unit may include a short paragraph on mealtime, a “practice.” For instance, Spaniards eat their largest and longest meal at lunch, from about 2:30–4:00 pm every day. U.S. students may read this and only note the late time and the fact that Spaniards’ most important meal is at lunch, while in the United States it is dinner. Studying abroad provides a setting where students can understand the behaviors, interactions, values, and beliefs of the society that they are living in simply by walking out of their apartment door and observing people in the street or in restaurants or by sitting with their host family for a long lunch. Indeed, for students to truly understand the “perspective” behind a family meal in Spain, they have to sit at the table and experience a sobremesa. Described as the lengthy period of time after a meal when family and friends sit and relax, engaging in endless conversation, sobremesa is the key for students to see for themselves the importance of family (and relationships) in Hispanic culture, and to understand why lunch extends for almost two hours. Through these experiences, students studying abroad can also critically reflect on both their own culture and the culture they join while abroad. So, the challenge is to recreate these opportunities, experiences, and critical reflections on cultural “perspectives” at the home institution. Through the Communication and Cultures standards, students are given the tools to express themselves and understand the culture associated with the target language. Students can also employ these tools in a more natural context through activities that fulfill the Communities standard (the fifth of the 5 Cs), which is a fundamental step toward reaching high-level linguistic and cultural proficiency. The Communities standard states that language learners “use the language within and beyond the school setting,” and “show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment” (National Standards, 2015). To reach this goal, students can participate in various activities both in and outside of the classroom: students can travel, study abroad, participate in service-learning projects, interact with native language speakers; they can also attend festivals and events where

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the target language is spoken or culture is celebrated, read books, or listen to music in the target language, and play games and sports. Thanks to the Communication and Cultures standards whose goals are communicative and intercultural competence, students can actively participate and form part of different communities in and outside of the classroom. Connections and Comparisons, the remaining two Cs, often surface organically in tasks. Students “build, reinforce, and expand their knowledge,” making connections that will push them to “develop critical thinking and to solve problems creatively” (National Standards, 2015). It is common for students studying Spanish to make connections with other courses that they are taking in college. For instance, in Spanish class, students may analyze a piece by Frida Kahlo using art vocabulary, while in an art history class, students may read Kahlo’s biography to better understand how art has changed over time in relation to gender and sexual identities and social movements. For the Comparisons standard, learners use their target language to “investigate, explain, and reflect on the concept of culture [and] the nature of language” through comparison (National Standards, 2015). For example, a podcast episode on the legacy of Mexican-American singer, Selena, and her influence on the Latin American community in the United States in the 1990s may have students making comparisons to current Latine musicians, like Puerto Rican singer, Bad Bunny, whose music has impacted the Latine culture. If the Communities standard is present, the Connections and Comparisons standards usually rise naturally in language learning. It is easier for students to make connections to and comparisons with other areas of interest since they have more opportunities to grow personally and academically in the presence of more people and because having more diverse experiences and interactions allows for more connections and comparisons. Communication and Cultures, the first 2 Cs, are a constant in most language classrooms, but the Communities standard is often disregarded, so much so that it is referred to as the “Lost C” (Cutshall Nov. 2012, 33). According to Pablo Muirhead, a Spanish and Teacher Education instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College, teachers may feel that their job is to only provide students with the “‘mechanics and tools’ to use the language” (as cited in Cutshall Nov. 2012, 33). Other instructors posit that logistics is the reason that the Communities standard is commonly neglected. Since world language instructors cover many topics during a semester, the Communities standard is frequently left behind—routinely due to a pressing schedule (Cutshall Nov. 2012, 33). As explained previously, studying abroad can be challenging for some students and unexpected situations—like the COVID-19 pandemic— may make travel or meeting in person impossible. Due to such limitations, this book encourages instructors to prioritize the Communities standard. As Muirhead describes, “Languages and cultures are alive; they grow and

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evolve, and are informed by the communities where they reside” (as cited in Cutshall Nov. 2012, 33). The goal of this project, therefore, is for instructors to reimagine the traditional study abroad model and consider alternatives that promote cultural and linguistic immersion from the home institution, therefore fulfilling the Communities standard in an innovative way. In addition to the 5Cs, instructors should also keep in mind the various skills listed in the 21st Century World Language Skills map, developed in 2011 by ACTFL in conjunction with The Partnership for Twenty-First-Century (P21) Skills. The map includes specific examples of how twenty-first-century skills can be integrated into world language instruction and is organized into several categories: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving, creativity, technology literacy/information literacy/media literacy, flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accessibility, and leadership and responsibility. These skills often arise naturally in conjunction with ACTFL’s 5 Cs in our classroom community. CURRICULUM REFORM AND DIGITAL TOOLS The term “community” usually conjures up images of a group of people, most often in real time, meeting together for a common purpose or over a shared interest in one space. Schools have their own communities, which academics currently label “classroom communities.” A classroom community is a group of students and instructors that shares the same educational goals and expectations (Rovai 2001, 34). Taking this definition one step further, several scholars (Reingold, 1991 and Hill, 1996) argue that “community is specific to setting, and its components will change to reflect a changing setting” (as cited in Jerónimo and Martin 2021, 5; my emphasis). Keeping this definition and the ever-changing digital world in mind, I argue that virtual spaces can serve as a setting to foster a new type of community. Digital tools can create an immersive space through which students can communicate, gain cultural knowledge, make connections and comparisons, and build community; that is, they have the power to recreate the study abroad experience. Employing digital tools may also raise new questions and challenges: how do instructors decide on which digital tool to use? What type of training, if any, is necessary to design and build a virtual linguistic and cultural immersion experience and at the same time, a supportive digital community? In the last few years, a growing number of colleges have recognized the benefits of modern technology when educating twenty-first-century learners. Classrooms are fitted with the latest technology and instructors incorporate the latest online tools and programs in their classrooms to enhance student

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learning. In this regard, schools are responding to students’ needs. Generation Z (1997–2012) is the first to grow up with technology. Their daily life revolves around technology. They are accustomed to “friending” on social media, communicating via text messages and direct messages (DMs), and sharing images and videos every day with friends and family. According to a 2016 study published in the Journal of Adolescence, about half of the time that teens spend on the Internet is dedicated to social media (Scott and Woods, 2016). Members of Generation Z want to be connected to the world around them and to have access to and share information in a matter of seconds; schools are allowing them to do so by bringing modern technology into the classroom. The popularity of digital tools among Gen Zers, however, is not a sufficient reason to incorporate them into the classroom. As with any teaching methodology, the decision to implement technology must be carefully researched. Technology should not be used simply because it forms part of the latest trend or because it acts as a “quick fill-in or review” (Woodall 2021, 30). ACTFL leaders promote technology while still insisting on the careful selection and incorporation of digital tools: The use of technology is not a goal in and of itself; rather technology is one tool that supports language learners as they use the target language in culturally appropriate ways to accomplish authentic tasks. Further, all language learning opportunities whether facilitated through technology or in a classroom setting, should be standards-based, instructor-designed, learner-centered, and aimed at developing proficiency in the target language through interactive, meaningful, and cognitively engaging learning experiences. (Role of Technology . . . , 2017)

Using technology with no objective can have negative effects on learners. It will not promote deep learning, create community, or encourage communication. Serious consideration should be put into the decision, and, like any pedagogical activity, the tool should foster meaningful learning and connection among students. Once the learning goals for the course or the assignment have been established, instructors should select a digital tool. The following questions can help instructors think critically about technology integration: 1.  How does the digital tool enhance my activity? 2.  How does the digital tool engage, empower, and motivate students? 3.  Does the digital tool connect students to the real world and allow them to use the target language outside of the classroom?

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To further assess a digital tool’s value, instructors should turn to the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition) model. This framework can guide instructors in determining if a digital tool meets an activity’s learning goals: Substitution • The technology provides a substitute for other learning activities with no functional change. Augmentation • The technology provides a substitute for other learning activities but with functional improvements. Modification • The technology allows the learning activity to be redesigned. Redefinition • The technology allows for the creation of tasks that could not have been done without the use of the technology. According to the SAMR model, activities within the substitution and augmentation classifications enhance learning, while activities within the modification and redefinition categories transform learning (Puentedura, 2013). Substitution involves replacing traditional activities or worksheets with digital ones. Instead of completing a homework assignment or quiz on a sheet of paper, students could submit it through Google Forms. Augmentation implies that the activity is vastly enhanced, or “augmented,” by the incorporation of a digital tool. An oral presentation can be augmented by including a PowerPoint with multimedia, like a video clip or song. PowerPoint also has the option of hyperlinking additional resources so that interested students can explore a topic further on their own. At the modification stage, the digital tool can transform the entire activity. In place of a routine group presentation, students can create an engaging podcast and share it with classmates. This activity is significantly more interactive and dynamic than a class presentation to peers. Redefinition is the most transformational stage of the SAMR model; here, technology creates innovative learning opportunities. Using the previous example of the podcast, students could upload the final product to the course’s learning management system (LMS) or share it with a larger community by creating a wiki or blog, and then respond to listeners’ comments in the target language on the website. Redefinition gives students the opportunity to connect with others and use the target language outside of the classroom. Rather than focusing on reaching the modification and redefinition stages, instructors can view the model as a guide to reflect on the pedagogical objective behind technology integration in a classroom activity.

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Although the SAMR model can be helpful for selecting certain digital tools over others in the classroom, additional factors should be considered as well. Besides the three questions previously listed, I share two others: 1.  How much time will instructors need to learn how to use the digital tool? 2.  How much time will it take to teach students how to use the digital tool? Is it worth taking class time for this? The SAMR model is an effective tool, but only if educators take the time to clearly define the objective behind their technology choice and the logistics, specifically how much time they may or not have in a given semester to allot to digital literacy. THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION Despite the efforts of some world language departments to become leaders in engaging students with technology, other language programs are lacking, through no fault of their own. In the last two decades professional organizations like the Modern Language Association (MLA) and ACTFL have promoted technology in world language education, but to varying degrees. The mission of the MLA is to promote the study of languages and literature. In 2002, the MLA published a document that described the critical role of technology in modern language departments. Five years later, the organization published a report, Foreign Language and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World, suggesting reforms for world language teaching in higher education (MLA, 2007). In this document, the MLA offers several recommendations, one of which is that “graduate studies should provide substantive training in language teaching and in the use of new technologies” (para. 19). As with many of the other suggestions listed in the report, the ad hoc committee does not delve into what “substantive training” would look like as part of the graduate curriculum or what “new technologies” consist of. This problem is demonstrative of how professional organizations promote world language education to varying degrees, and often fail to provide concrete examples of tools or activities to ameliorate the issue. Similar to the MLA, ACTFL actively supports digital tools in and outside of the classroom. Though ACTFL’s mission does differ somewhat from the MLA’s: its goal is to expand on and improve the teaching and learning of world languages at all levels of instruction. In 2017, ACTFL published a statement on the role of technology in language learning. In this valuable document, ACTFL highlights the numerous benefits of using digital tools in language classes, including the possibility to connect students in the target

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language outside of the classroom and to provide them with authentic material in the target culture (Role of Technology . . . , 2017). At the same time, ACTFL seems to be aware that not all instructors are well versed on the latest gadgets and programs, since during the pandemic, the organization offered several webinars on remote learning. Many high school world language faculty integrate digital tools into their curricula. They learn about these tools at conferences, workshops, and webinars, fulfilling a certain number of professional development (PD) hours every year. These PD events, which often span several days, like the annual ACTFL convention, are almost entirely related to second language acquisition and pedagogy. Consequently, many high school instructors are exposed not only to the latest technology, but they have also become well versed in the most recent teaching standards and pedagogical practices. Additionally, during these conferences, teachers have an opportunity to connect with others in the same field, forming solid professional relationships and expanding their community. In contrast, many college language faculty are not required to attend pedagogy conferences. In fact, many professors who are tenure track or tenured in a language department primarily attend conferences and workshops related to their research, which often falls outside of second language acquisition and pedagogy. If the language department has a linguistics program, it is possible that there is an instructor with a background in second language acquisition, but this is not a given, especially in smaller, more traditional institutions. Non-tenured faculty members, like visiting professors, lecturers, and adjunct instructors, may not receive adequate research funds or support to attend these conferences. Orientation sessions on teaching may also take place at the beginning of the academic year, but only language instructors typically attend. As a result, many college faculty members are not informed about the latest teaching methodologies and innovative technologies. This is alarming since many decisions related to the mission and the planning of department curricula lie in their hands. This issue touches on the dichotomy that separates language instruction from literature and culture in numerous world language departments in higher education. In their Foreign Language and Higher Education (2007) report, the MLA examined the teaching of languages in colleges and universities. The report critiqued the “narrow model” implemented in many language curricula: a two or three-year language sequence followed by canonical literature courses. This two-tiered system inevitably creates a division between the language and literature curriculum. In most world language departments non-tenured instructors often teach language courses, and in larger departments with doctoral programs these instructors usually supervise graduate teaching assistants as well. Meanwhile, tenured and tenure-track faculty

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frequently teach upper-level content courses, primarily consisting of literature or film from different eras of the target language and culture. This model builds tension between tenure-track and non-tenured instructors by dividing what they teach, as well as the curricula, into language and content courses. Exceptions to this “narrow model” exist, with some tenured professors teaching Novice or Intermediate language courses along with Advanced content courses, but this varies according to program. The MLA report called for world language departments to embrace an open model, rather than a narrow one, in which “language, culture, and literature are taught as a continuous whole, supported by alliance with other departments and expressed through interdisciplinary courses” (Foreign Languages and Higher Education . . . , 2007). In this regard, language is synonymous with literature and culture. Language is not viewed as a means to be able to learn literature and culture. Instead, literature and culture become the vehicle through which language is taught. Through a unified four-year curriculum, according to the MLA report, students can reach translingual and transcultural competence, which is the ability to operate between languages and reflect on the culture of the target language in order to understand their own. Despite the wide distribution of this report, the two-tiered “narrow model” remains popular in numerous language departments in the United States. According to a 2017 survey to assess departments’ response to the MLA report, administered by Gillian Lord and Lara Lomicka Anderson, 45.1% of the faculty members who participated had not attempted to modify their department’s curriculum at all after the MLA 2007 report. Additionally, only 39% of the faculty and administrators who had read the report modified their curriculum significantly (Lord and Lomicka Anderson 2017, 117). So, ten years after the MLA report, most programs were only at the initial stages of reform. Some programs had begun to carry out some changes, which included focusing less on literary studies, incorporating multiliteracies and culture within language courses, creating opportunities for community engagement, and developing interdisciplinary initiatives. Other respondents to the 2017 survey expressed interest in reforming the curriculum, but listed several challenges, including a lack of time, training, knowledge, and support. From these varied results, the authors concluded that there was a “general awareness of the recommendations of the MLA report and overall acceptance of the need to change,” but that reform was slow (Lord and Lomicka Anderson 2017, 118). Curriculum reform is the first step in bridging the gap between world language faculty across various levels and fields in higher education. To create a seamless program, language and content must be addressed at all levels, from the very beginning of language study to the last semester of college. Part of the problem lies in the approach that many postsecondary language

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programs implement. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), one of the more popular teaching methodologies for language instruction, emphasizes oral expression. Although this methodology can be beneficial, it also has its shortcomings. Literature is often neglected for many reasons with this approach. For example, teachers “may not feel comfortable with modeling reading strategies and engaging students in discussions of literary works” (Steinhart 2006, 259). Since CLT has been practiced since the 1980s, so many teachers may only be familiar with this approach. Consequently, they could be less inclined to integrate literature into the language curriculum (Steinhart 2006, 259). Conversely, upper-level content instructors tend to focus on students’ writing and reading but may not pay close attention to their aural/ oral communication. Steinhart (2006) proposes that “content needs to be the focus of the language courses, and language strands need to be woven into the literary-cultural content” (260), thus, reiterating the importance of language and upper-level course instructors to regularly meet and collaborate on material in order to create a unified department with similar pedagogical approaches. Recent scholarship has proposed the value of a literacy-based pedagogy to put an end to the bifurcation in language departments and create a strong, cohesive program. Significant research and data on the multiliteracies approach exceeds the scope of this project, but a brief description is necessary for the purpose of this book and will be developed in Chapter 2. Traditionally, literacy was limited to the practice of reading and writing. The term now is considered “a social and individual phenomenon that involves interpreting and creating a range of multimodal texts from various perspectives” (Paesani 2016, 266). With a multiliteracies approach in an academic setting, the traditional literacy curriculum, focused on grammar and the literary canon, is transformed into a “more productive, relevant, innovative and creative and even perhaps emancipatory” pedagogy that emphasizes meaning making (Cope and Kalantzis 2009, 165). As active agents of the literacy process, readers participate in the “social world, and its contemporary forms increasingly multimodal, with linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial modes of meaning becoming increasingly integrated in everyday media and cultural practices” (Cope and Kalantzis 2009,165). Under a multiliteracies approach, texts include spoken, written, visual and audio documents, making it a viable and relevant option for students of all language levels and an effective pedagogy to build a virtually immersive linguistic and cultural experience from the home institution.

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DIGITAL TOOLS TO PROMOTE DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, AND BELONGING (DEIB) Thanks to technology, billions of people remained connected during the pandemic. The world became increasingly interconnected. Schools and other workplaces turned to Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms to connect with students, clients, colleagues, and so on. For possibly the first time, all language instructors, regardless of proficiency level, implemented digital tools in their classes to engage students. It was an important first step to uniting language and advanced content courses, showing that both fields can and should share similar methodologies and objectives. The pandemic was a pedagogical opportunity for instructors to put aside their standard, often lecture-based methodology, and to be creative, think outside of the box, and embrace new ideas. Instructors noted how challenging it was to teach a grammar concept over Zoom, regulate breakout rooms for a book discussion, and keep students motivated. Innovative activities were a necessary means to connect students and provide them with opportunities to view the target language and culture in a new lens, to recreate the study abroad experience to the best of their ability, and to immerse students in the language and culture, all from the safety of their homes and dorm rooms. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare disparities in the United States, specifically digital (and racial) inequalities. Remote learning revealed significant gaps in resources, funding, and technology. Some students did not have access to technical equipment and reliable Internet connection. Others who had stable Internet and the necessary digital tools at home frequently had to share them with the rest of the family, so access to technology was limited. The increased reliance on technology created a digital divide that affected primarily black and Latine communities. Amid the growing disparities of the global pandemic, George Floyd was killed by police in Minnesota in June 2020. His murder, along with additional shootings that same summer, prompted protests for racial justice, like Black Lives Matter, and a call for social justice in education. Addressing racial and educational inequities became the primary focus of diversity, equity, and inclusion operations in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Colleges have historically committed to diversity, especially concerning admissions and hiring matters, but in the last few years, offices of DEI have been established on college campuses. DEI now plays a prominent role in curriculum. One of the many goals of DEI is to create an inclusive classroom environment for effective learning. In particular, this book showcases the role of specific digital tools in making language learning inclusive of and accessible to all students. With technology, students can

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access information, communicate with peers, and create and share original material with the world. Empowered with digital literacy skills, students can raise awareness of important topics, like social justice, increase engagement with the rest of the campus and larger community, and work toward easing access. Not only can technology foster inclusivity in and outside of the classroom, but also certain methodologies. Mentioned earlier, the multiliteracies approach takes into consideration the diversity of students by embracing various literacies. Literacy goes beyond the traditional text to include other multimodalities, like audio, images, and film—all thanks to technology. The approach also aligns well with the goals of digital humanities, which combines technology with humanities-driven research. Since the early 2000s, digital humanities have flourished, becoming its own field of study in many higher education institutions. In world language departments, digital humanities work offers students the possibility of using mapping programs, presentational platforms, and qualitative and quantitative software to analyze different cultural products (literature, art, films, music, etc.) (Philips 2021, 642–644). Students not only hone their target language skills with digital humanities projects, but also their L2 research skills for different texts and tools. These technology-driven projects, which tend to be more accessible and community oriented (Philips 2021, 644) complement L2 instruction, which supports collaboration. In turn, students feel a sense of belonging (B), which is often added to the DEI acronym. Projects that include multiple forms of assessment follow an inclusion-driven approach. By keeping in mind students’ diverse learning styles and experiences, these multimodal assignments ensure that all voices are heard. They also provide students with a range of digital, linguistic, and analytical skills that they can use in other classes and in their professional careers. PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT FOR INNOVATIVE TEACHING AND STUDENT LEARNING Learning a new digital tool requires sufficient professional and information technology (IT) support, practice, and time. This was apparent when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and teachers found themselves face-to-face with Zoom. Panic ensued as faculty quickly modified their syllabi from synchronous to asynchronous courses and attempted to stay calm amid a debilitating physical and mental health crisis. To assist and support instructors with this challenge, numerous professional organizations, IT staff, and instructors offered online workshops and webinars on best practices related to online learning, many focusing on Zoom and other popular digital tools. During

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these sessions, presenters shared helpful tips on how to design engaging activities using breakout rooms and other videoconferencing features. Despite the increased professional development opportunities, for many instructors, using the new technology effectively and comfortably took months. Even if instructors embrace technology, professional development in this area must be ongoing. As with any teaching methodology, instructors at all levels must continue to learn and develop their understanding of pedagogy and technology (Woodall 2021, 32). They should stay informed on the latest digital tools by attending conferences, webinars, and other PD opportunities not only focused on teaching, but also on digital gadgets, apps, and platforms. Moreover, institutions should offer their faculty resources to support their technology-driven initiatives. During the pandemic, faculty realized, perhaps for the first time, how essential an IT department on campus is. IT departments may include academic technology specialists. Working with IT staff is critical for instructors when working to meaningfully integrate digital tools into the classroom to enhance teaching and learning. Academic technology specialists could also organize hands-on workshops for faculty that focus on promoting a specific digital tool. Faculty who have successfully incorporated technology into their classes could also be invited to showcase their work to interested colleagues and answer questions. Academic research interns, students hired by an instructor, could also support faculty with technology-related matters in connection to their courses. Technology training is not limited to instructors. Although members of Gen Z rely on technology regularly and have been labeled “digital natives,” this does not mean that they inherently understand how to use digital tools. Students may be excited to see innovative technology because it forms part of their culture. At the same time, using “traditionally ‘non-academic’ technology like social media may cause students to be anxious or hesitant” (Page 2018, 182). Students are initially more comfortable using technology that they are familiar with in the classroom like PowerPoint, Google Docs, or Prezi. So, taking students out of their digital comfort zone in an academic setting at first may make them nervous and lead to some resistance. An additional obstacle with incorporating new digital tools in language instruction is that students who are not as tech savvy as their peers could experience feelings of frustration, anxiety, and embarrassment at not being able to navigate the tool as easily as their classmates. In the end, technology integration can be isolating. Thus, building a digital literacy program within the school would be helpful for students. Students, in addition to faculty, need technological support, which debunks the myth that students are totally fluent and comfortable with all technology. Finally, equitable access to technology is an important societal issue to consider when designing activities that rely on digital tools. Students (and

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their families) may not have access to electronic devices in their dorm rooms or at home. IT departments should have equipment available that students can rent for a year or semester if needed. For under-resourced IT departments, schools should strategically plan and budget for technology costs. They can build partnerships with external organizations and turn to government resources to provide students with digital tools. Additionally, instructors must be well-informed on digital accessibility: is the technology and the digital content accessible and understandable to all students, including those with disabilities? Well-designed learning tools can empower and support students and create a more inclusive learning environment. BOOK OVERVIEW Study abroad is the ideal option for world language students to immerse themselves in the target language and culture. However, circumstances often beyond control, like a pandemic, may make travel plans difficult, if not impossible. During the COVID-19 pandemic, study abroad programs had to reinvent themselves to stay afloat. These virtual offerings did not replace the traditional study abroad experience, but they were an effective and financially attractive option for students. Technology has the potential to engage students, and to provide an opportunity for linguistic and cultural immersion to all participants regardless of socioeconomic status, scheduling conflicts, and so on. Digital projects also help prepare students for future travel: the more instructors and administrators do from the home institution, the more prepared students will feel abroad. Most research up to this point demonstrates how digital tools in traditional language classes support ACTFL’s 5 Cs, but this book bridges the long-established division between language and advanced content (film, literature, art, etc.) courses. It demonstrates how the 5 Cs, obtainable in a traditional study abroad experience, are equally present and achievable through digital activities carried out in world language and upper-level courses at students’ home institutions. Technology can be implemented in both fields to immerse students in the target language and culture, foster connections, and comparisons, and most importantly, create community in and outside of the classroom, recovering the final and “Lost C.” The activities and examples shared in this book demonstrate that the traditional study abroad model and the digital tools that can be used to recreate it do not differ greatly from each other. Each chapter focuses on one of three modes of communication: presentational, interpretive, and interpersonal. Various skills from the 21st Century World Language Skills map are also addressed, specifically information,

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media, and technology literacy, social and cross-cultural skills, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, innovation, and flexibility. Similar to the actions that students must take before traveling and the experiences that produce a myriad of feelings while abroad, students using digital tools at their home institution also follow different steps to reach a certain level of immersion. Like the traditional study abroad models, some of these steps take place before and after the trip. Using this idea as a touchstone, the book is organized to mimic the trajectory of the traditional study abroad experience. Each chapter highlights one digital tool, along with activities implemented at the home institution that make language learning inclusive of and accessible to all students, thereby fulfilling DEI goals of higher education. These digital tools/activities correspond to a specific stage or moment during a student’s time abroad: familiarizing oneself with new surroundings (digital maps), making friends abroad (social media), and building one’s confidence in speaking and listening in the target language (telecollaboration). These topics were also chosen because they reflect some of the trials that students experience abroad, as seen in evaluations completed at the end of the program. Among the most challenging aspects of their experience abroad, Amherst College students frequently list navigating public transportation, discovering events and opportunities, and overcoming the language barrier to meet native speakers. Each chapter begins with a brief anecdote from students who completed activities involving digital tools to virtually immerse themselves in the target language and cultures from their home institution before participating in a traditional study abroad experience. Although anecdotal, the objective behind these students’ observations is to show that the two models of immersion (physical and digital) are not as different as one would think. Chapter 1 introduces readers to the concept of bookmapping, a pedagogical approach designed by Terence W. Cavanaugh and Jerome Burg that combines literature and geography to create a connection known as literary geography (2011, 2). The authors specifically focus on bookmapped storytelling, which consists of students creating their own narrations and placing them onto a map. With this idea in mind, this book walks readers through the process of designing a project using digital mapping programs (Google My Maps, StoryMap JS, etc.) that requires students to either trace a character’s movements in a novel or short story or create a digital story narrating their own life experiences—fictional or not. It includes several examples of projects emphasizing the presentational mode of communication and topics and themes for world language courses at all levels. Through researching cities and towns via a digital map, students can gain a better understanding of a country’s geography, topography, landmarks, culture, traditions, and people while still at their home institution.

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Chapter 2 focuses on social media, specifically Instagram (a video and photo platform), as a means to immerse students in a target language and culture and to create community—all from the home institution. Regarded as a multimodal text, Instagram can develop students’ multiliteracies (Wagner 2021, 154). The first part of the chapter examines how Instagram content, considered authentic material for L2 learners, can be used to design interpretive tasks focused on communication, culture, and community. The second part of the chapter demonstrates how Instagram can be an effective tool to discuss literature. It can transform a student’s experience reading authentic texts through redefining the traditional tasks of interpretation, discussion, and presentation to create a novel, collaborative, and dynamic literature classroom. Instagram is a meaningful way to break down the traditional barriers to teaching literature by bringing the readings to life by including numerous visual elements that enhance the text. The chapter also explores the challenges associated with social media in the classroom setting and will conclude with a discussion on additional ways to implement Instagram and other collaborative online tools at all language levels for interpersonal and interpretive communication, building community, and reimagining study abroad. Opportunities to practice the target language online with native speakers before going abroad, while at the home institution, can provide students with important social skills to initiate conversations. These virtual exchanges set students up for success when they travel abroad and need to communicate with someone spontaneously in the metro, on the street, or in a cafe. Creating a sense of community online with native speakers is easy to implement thanks to telecollaboration. Chapter 3’s focus on virtual immersion via telecollaborative language learning provides students with the opportunity to converse with native speakers outside of the classroom. Purposeful assignments in the form of written or visual reflections reinforce the course curriculum, allowing students to use linguistic structures and vocabulary acquired in class for real-world applications. As with bookmapped storytelling and social media, telecollaborative language programs immerse students in the target language and culture without them having to leave the safety of their homes or dormitories, but still creates an authentic communicative space with native speakers. Through interpersonal tasks, telecollaborative language programs fulfill the Communities standard: students connect with a conversation partner and communicate in the target language outside of the classroom. Specific examples from Novice and Intermediate Spanish students’ assignments are shared, along with telecollaborative language activities aimed at Advanced, upperlevel courses. Students at this level often feel like they have hit a plateau in their language learning, so activities that require them to engage with the course material with native speakers can help further their aural/oral skills and better prepare them for future travel or help them maintain their proficiency

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upon returning from a semester or year abroad. The chapter mainly highlights TalkAbroad, a popular telecollaborative language learning program, but a list of other platforms is included. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the future of telecollaborative learning in language classrooms in connection to twenty-first-century skills. The book’s conclusion considers a challenging moment after students’ study abroad experience: “reverse” culture shock, the feeling of reentering a place, but as a different person. Which digital activities can help students relive their study abroad experience and feel connected to the communities that they created abroad? What type of technology can immerse students in the target language and culture, so they maintain their proficiency and continue to learn more about the cultures of the language that they are studying? This book argues that technology can be a powerful tool to recreate the study abroad experience at home institutions, prompting educators and administrators to reimagine what immersion can look like in the future. With this in mind, the book is intended for language educators. However, it will also be useful for instructors who are interested in digital humanities, those who are beginning to study second language acquisition, experienced world language faculty who want to revamp their curriculum and try out new digital tools, and study abroad administrators. All of the material in the book is aimed at teachers of Spanish but the activities can be easily applied to other world languages as well. Like any profession, educators must continue to grow, learn new skills, and embrace novel approaches and digital tools to engage students with the course material. A driving force in pedagogy, technology should inform our twenty-first-century students’ learning and assessment. I hope the topics and projects in this book are a resource and support to instructors wishing to change their curriculum and examine technology and immersion under a new lens. My intention is that this book provides readers with innovative ideas to incorporate technology into the language classroom—across all proficiency levels—and to recreate the transformative experience of study abroad from the home institution.

Chapter One

Re-creating Study Abroad through Digital Maps

The journals [. . .] were very on point, considering that they were written from Internet research and imagination. As I look at them now, I am amazed that I am able to see all of the places mentioned in the diaries in my mind’s eye and link them to a memory. For me, that indicates how successful the virtual diaries are—they resemble so closely to the actual experience of walking the Camino. It was so neat to have collectively strung together an entire narrative of the Camino, and to have Google Maps to provide images and a visual representation. —Z.G., student who took SPAN303: Camino de Santiago at Amherst College and walked the Camino de Santiago, or The Way of St. James, after his year studying abroad in Logroño, Spain

A ROADMAP TO STUDY ABROAD First-year college students are bombarded with information about studying abroad, which typically takes place during the fall or spring semester of their third year. They are encouraged to attend study abroad fairs and program sessions and familiarize themselves with the global studies office on campus during their first two years. Once students have decided to study abroad, especially those studying a language, they have to consider the type of experience that they wish to have overseas. Below are several questions that students may reflect on during the decision-making process: 1.  What are my study abroad goals? 2.  What level of immersion in the target language and culture do I want? How rigorous is the program? For example, is there a language pledge?1 27

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3.  How important is location? Do I want to live in a small, medium-sized, or large city/town? Why? 4.  Are there specific requirements for how many semesters of the target language must be taken in the home institution to participate in the program? 5.  Is financial aid available and/or does my financial aid package at my home institution transfer/apply to my year or semester overseas? These initial questions may help students narrow down the endless possibilities available to them. Additional questions are compiled in Appendix A: Study Abroad Questions. Of these five questions, location is often the most important factor when choosing a study abroad program. Students may mull over this decision for weeks, weighing the pros and cons of different countries and cities. Some students opt to travel to a place they know that they would not likely visit in the future. Others choose a location because they have already traveled there and want to return (Smith 2016, 40). If a place is completely unfamiliar, students may seek advice from family, friends, or professors. It is probable that students will also use their phones to look up information. Searching for a city on Google produces various results: images, videos, a zoomable map, the latest news, and products with the city’s name posted on them available for purchase. For students eager to travel during their semester or year abroad, Google Maps is the most useful resource. By clicking on the Google Maps app on their phone, students can see how big or small the city is, how close they are to other countries (to visit friends studying in other areas or for the sake of traveling), and how easy it is to travel to neighboring cities by public transportation. Most of today’s college students depend on digital mapping tools like Google Maps, Waze, and Bing Maps daily. All of these are Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Developed in the early 1960s, GIS “allows us to analyze time and space together and to aggregate heterogenous data in ways that were nearly impossible to do previously. This aggregation of data permits the visualization of human activities, events, and processes in a common space and geography” (Perrone and Traynor 2021, 7). Students rely on these apps, installed on their phones, to navigate from point A to point B while driving, walking, or on public transportation. By reading (or listening to) directions on a digital map on their phone, users hold the world literally in their hands. In mere seconds, they discover the easiest, cost-effective, most fuel-efficient, fastest route to the destination of their choice—all while passively listening to the synthesized voice dictating the instructions and automatically following the commands. By entering not only the destination, but also the place of origin, they “generate maps and even become maps” (Engberg-Pedersen

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2017, 3). In this regard, with no training whatsoever, students become skilled cartographers, depending on maps daily to such an extent that they “live the map” (Engberg-Pedersen 2017, 3). As with anything used excessively, though, students’ reliance on location-based technology can have negative consequences. For instance, many Gen Zers do not know how to read a physical map. In a way, this is not surprising. Physical maps are a thing of the past, which may explain U.S. students’ deficiency in geography. According to the 2014 National Assessment of Education Progress report, approximately 75% of eighth graders in the United States tested below proficient in geography, demonstrating that a lack of map literacy skills frequently goes hand in hand with poor geography skills (The Nation’s Report Card). Readers may assume that students in a world language class are intentionally exposed to geography via physical or digital maps, but this is not always the case. Middle school and high school classrooms may have maps on their walls, but this setup is unlikely in college classrooms. Maps are sometimes located on the inside cover of language textbooks, but unless instructors design an activity that includes them, students may not be aware of their existence due to their discreet location. Electronic textbooks are regularly replacing paper copies and if there is an exercise specifically focused on a country or city, a map may be missing from the general material. If geography is incorporated into a lesson plan, it is usually intentional. A linguistics course, for example, can touch on geography when discussing language varieties in Spanish-speaking countries. In general, though, geography is overlooked in language courses. After studying a language for years, students may not be able to identify the countries and cities where it is spoken in the world. Cultural blurbs, frequently located at the end of textbook units, generally are students’ only exposure to geography. These sections, limited to a few paragraphs or pages, are often dedicated to a country where the target language is spoken. In addition to important facts like the name of the country’s capital, population size, and official language(s), a miniature size map of the country for students to orient themselves is typically included. This map, however, is small; it may not include neighboring countries, only an outline of the showcased country. Although these cultural sections are helpful in orienting students, the information can be problematic. Alongside these maps may be images that perpetuate stereotypes of the highlighted society and culture. For instance, pictures of beautiful beaches with crystal clear water and people tanning on lounge chairs in luxurious resorts are common when reading about Caribbean countries like Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Although resorts are popular destinations to visit in the Caribbean and their beaches are stunning, these depictions are limiting. A

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significant portion of textbook content fails to depict the cultural richness that makes the Spanish-speaking world so diverse and unique. These controversial depictions, referred to as a “tourist gaze,” are not limited to world language textbooks; this content is also common in travel guides. John Urry (2002) describes the tourist gaze as a way to gaze upon the “Other” from a tourist’s perspective. When we travel to a new place, we often purchase a guidebook or download a digital app to orient ourselves before the trip. The “tourist gaze” behind these resources is “guided by the anticipation of pleasure and directed toward objects such as an ethnic group, landscape, or cultural performance” (Prins and Webster 2010, 8). As a result, in a Spain guidebook, travelers may see photos of overcrowded beaches on the Mediterranean Sea, bullfights, and a portrayal of the majority of Spaniards as white. Spain’s beaches are not limited to the Mediterranean; other regions in the country boast impressive beaches, like Galicia, home of the Cíes Islands, a UNESCO World Heritage candidate. In the last five years, bullfights have been a topic of contention among Spaniards, especially in cities. And, in reality, Spain’s population, especially in large cities like Madrid and Barcelona, is becoming increasingly diverse. In addition to this cultural information, guides often include keywords and phrases in the target language that may be helpful for a visitor but tend to be overly formulaic, like ordering food, asking for directions, and making a hotel reservation (Vinall and Shin 2019, 183–184). It is crucial that tourists gather information, perhaps creating a “must see” list and helpful vocabulary in order to have the best possible trip. The problem, however, is that this information, like the brief cultural sections in the language textbooks, is presented as facts. In the classroom, instructors frequently have students summarize and regurgitate these tidbits to the class in the form of oral presentations supported by visuals. As a result, culture is viewed as a “straightforward, homogeneous, collective entity and that people have equal access to cultural practices—making apolitical comparisons between ‘our’ cultures and ‘their’ cultures possible” (Canale 2016, 239). In reality, culture is a complex, multifaceted, and rich phenomenon. The information behind these cultural tidbits is not ideal for language learners as it perpetuates stereotypes and is often one-sided, but it can act as a starting point to develop “critical cultural awareness, understood as ‘an ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of explicit criteria, perspectives, practices and products in one’s own and other cultures and countries’” (Byram 1997, 53). In order to move beyond the “tourist gaze,” which has visitors and/or students noticing otherness and difference, and exhibit cultural awareness, “a sustained experience, with conscientious reflection” is necessary (Prins and Webster 2010, 8; Camacho 2004, 41). Besides reflection, I would add that authentic material, which is text, audio, or video designed for native language

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speakers, should replace or act as a counterpoint to the cultural material in many textbooks in order to introduce real-world language and incite critical cultural reflection. This authentic material can take many forms, but maps, in my opinion, are the most enriching for their power to transport students out of the classroom and immerse them in a new language and culture. Reading a map may seem like an obsolete skill to have in the twenty-first century, but it develops students’ spatial thinking and helps them understand their sense of space and place, becoming writers of their own maps, their own realities. The following chapter addresses the implementation of digital maps in the language classroom and upper-level content courses. Specifically, it examines bookmapped storytelling, a pedagogical approach created by Terence W. Cavanaugh and Jerome Burg (2011). Instructors can design a digital project using various online mapping tools that require students to either trace a character’s movements in a novel or short story, or create an original digital story, an opportunity to write about their own life, travels, and experiences— fictional or not—to share with a larger public. Text, images, and videos support students’ virtual travels. This task, which combines various multimedia tools, would be impossible without technology; therefore, it falls under “Redefinition” on the SAMR model. While most of the chapter is dedicated to a digital mapping project designed for Intermediate-low Spanish students, the activity can be adapted for other proficiency levels and languages. This particular bookmapping project, written in the form of a diary, corresponds to the presentational mode: it conveys meaningful information for a purpose to a specific audience using language (in this case, through writing). As mentioned in the introduction, there are three modes of communication: presentational, interpretive, and interpersonal. Each of the three chapters in this book will focus on one mode, but it is important to acknowledge that the other two are present. Despite its effectiveness, bookmapping remains little studied in world language education. Using the framework of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL’s) 5Cs, I demonstrate how bookmapped storytelling projects effectively immerse students in the target language and culture, allowing them to improve their linguistic and cultural proficiency, make connections to other disciplines, compare their own native language and culture to that of the target culture, and achieve global competence. Quotes and examples from students’ projects and their responses to a post-project survey support this demonstration. Besides the Intermediate-low bookmapping diary, I provide readers with examples of additional digital mapping projects and themes for upper-level content courses. Several skills listed in the 21st Century World Language Skills map are addressed as well, including creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, innovation, and information, media, and technology literacy. Finally, after sharing several assessment

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ideas, I address the challenges that I encountered while implementing this approach in the classroom and offer suggestions to help instructors consider implementing bookmapped storytelling in the future. BOOKMAPPED STORYTELLING IN THE CLASSROOM For centuries, maps have played an important role in literature. The correlation between travel/maps and narration dates back to the medieval period. Mappaemundi, or medieval world maps as they are frequently called, were more than visual representations of the landscape. Classical and biblical narratives imbued these geographical frameworks, leading David Woodward to conclude that: “[t]he mappaemundi are the cartographic equivalent of narrative medieval pictures” (1985, 514). Maps—physical or virtual—therefore, are cultural products and ideal material for any world language classroom, but especially those with a focus on research and writing. Physical and digital maps can be viewed as interactive reading tools (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 7) that make connections between geography and histories, or stories. First coined by Terence W. Cavanaugh and Jerome Burg, modern day bookmapping combines literature and geography to create a cognitive connection known as literary geography (2011, 2). This link is important because location frequently receives the least attention from readers, yet it often serves as the driving force behind a storyline. The fifth chapter of Cavanaugh and Burg’s Bookmapping: Lit Trips and Beyond (2011) examines book-related maps for fiction and nonfiction that allow students to identify and research locations mentioned in the readings and trace the characters’ movements (7). The concept is similar to mental maps (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 9): while reading a text, it is common to form a mental image of the character(s) and space(s). By creating a story bookmap, students follow the storyline and plot the different setting locations by placing map pins or markers on the digital map to show where the action takes place. These locations can be marked for each chapter or during significant moments in the book. Students should be aware that sometimes the location is not explicitly stated or described well, so they may have to rely on clues in the text to determine where the story takes place (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 86). If the text’s location is based on a physical space, readers can view images online, watch videos on YouTube, and look up different features on a digital map like Google Maps and record their findings. With this type of assignment, faraway places or unfamiliar street names transform into something real: Maps (whether topographic or geographic) fill [a] function of authentification because, providing a reference to the work of fiction, they tie the work

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to a ‘reality’ designated as foreign to the text; they anchor the fiction in a spatial and temporal reality to what elsewhere readers feel they gain access. (Besse 2017, 27)

Being able to follow a character’s trajectory as they visit real places on a tangible map not only helps readers more fully understand the text, but the authenticity of the task contributes to deeper engagement: students feel like they are right there walking alongside the main character, perhaps even taking on a new persona, and transforming into the protagonist or secondary character. In addition to bookmapping, Cavanaugh and Burg share other mapping activities that may be of interest to instructors. Students can create a story effects storymap if there is a text in which different locations are mentioned that influence the story, but the characters do not physically go there (2011, 88). The authors also mention a collaborative reading guide bookmap, where placemarks can orient students, specifically through reading questions, which may be open-ended, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and so on. (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 88). If students are divided into groups and each one is responsible for one chapter, they can answer each other’s questions, making this activity entirely student-driven. Likewise, the instructor can implement this activity in future courses or questions can be recycled for more formal assessments. This bookmap goes hand in hand with the cross-curricular bookmap, which also includes questions, but they do not necessarily connect with the reading (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 91). Instead, the questions may draw on interdisciplinary topics like history or sociology, satisfying ACTFL’s Connections standard. Students can also complete a personal comparison bookmap, which requires that they draw comparisons between their physical location and that in the book, noting similarities and differences (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 89). This type of assignment fulfills ACTFL’s Comparisons standard. Another way for students to think about the text is to focus on an author and the different locations in which their books take place, completing an author study bookmap (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 90). Finally, a bookmap can be gamified and involve a timed scavenger hunt that has students completing clues posted on pinmarks that relate to the story (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 92). When students create their own narrations and place them into a map, this technique is referred to as “bookmapped storytelling” (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 51). Journal entries and short stories are an ideal medium for such an assignment, as students can either make up stories or share their own travel adventures (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 49). With bookmapped storytelling, maps transform into text and “spaces become places” through the stories that are told (Perrone and Traynor 2021, 5). Maps are not just “tools for

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interpretation,” but rather, they are “new texts that tell stories themselves, stories that inevitably will excise themselves from the original data and create new pathways of meaning” (Philips 2021, 644). Digital maps in particular are powerful tools that take on a new dimension when viewed as texts because they are constantly being modified and updated. As such, the space is always incomplete: If time unfolds as change then space unfolds as interaction. In that sense space is the social dimension. Not in the sense of exclusively human sociability, but in the sense of engagement within a multiplicity. It is the sphere of the continuous production and reconfiguration of heterogeneity in all its forms—diversity, subordination, conflicting interests. (Massey 2012, 61)

Embedding stories onto moldable, ever-changing maps opens endless possibilities of text creation. As part of a writing project, the Street View function of digital maps allows students to explore in-depth the setting of the location on their map and transfer their own observations to characters. By zooming in on their location, they can see a finer image of their surroundings. The street names themselves may also spark students’ creativity: “the street names . . . are what drive the imagination, the element allowing passage from one place to another and, at the same time, access to the entire city” (Besse 2017, 22). With Street View, students feel like they are present. Referencing Aristotle, who posited that every being is somewhere (Physics, IV, 1) and to exist is to have a place, Jean-Marc Besse (2017) states that “[w]hen the map shows the place told in the story it becomes in a certain way the very proof of the story” (27). Therefore, if instructors want the setting to drive students’ stories, exploring it through Street View is essential. A bookmapping project is an effective way to engage students with a text for several reasons. As Cavanaugh and Burg point out, literature and geography are usually viewed as two separate curriculum topics (2011, 19). Fusing the two is a “cross-curricular approach” that ties well with the goals of many college programs whose mission is to promote interdisciplinary material across all subject areas in order to build critical thinking skills (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 19). Such an approach aligns with the MLA’s 2007 goals, which aim to bridge the gap between literature and language programs through a multiliteracy approach. The incorporation of other topics creates a far more enriching immersive experience for students as they integrate themselves into the story and the culture through different topics like history, art, and music.

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Additionally, one of the underlying objectives of bookmapping is attention to global awareness and global citizenship. Burg and Cavanaugh define the two terms, which are frequently interchangeable, yet distinct: Global awareness suggests the need to have some level of information about or cognizance of relevant facts on global issues. Global citizenship, on the other hand, suggests that regardless of our differing nationalities, races, financial circumstances, or cultural norms, as inhabitants of a ‘flat earth,’ we each have responsibilities to the entire global community that parallel the responsibilities we have to our countries of residence and our local communities. (2011, 16–17)

To understand global issues, students must learn about and encounter, in person or digitally, other cultures and perspectives of speakers of the languages they are studying. Through bookmapping projects, readers become explorers, fulfilling their roles as digital citizens and achieving global awareness through their research and interaction with the material. As a result, they develop their information, media, and technology literacy, listed in the 21st Century World Language Skills map. They actively participate in the act of reading a map and become the writers of their own maps, picking and choosing the content that most resonates with them, but also using the map pins to discover more and reflect on their new surroundings. This type of insight helps students develop openness to those who may seem different. As a result, they will be more prepared when the time comes to interact with speakers in the target language on a range of topics, including global issues. PRESENTATIONAL COMMUNICATION: TRAVEL DIARY PROJECT Many stories start with a journey. For students studying abroad at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, their stories overseas ended abruptly. They were sent back to their home countries and international and domestic travel shut down for months. Students missed opportunities to connect deeply with classmates, native speakers, and host families. They were not able to travel extensively around the country. Some were abroad for such a short period of time that they did not get a chance to familiarize themselves with their new neighborhood. What if students’ study abroad experiences, though, could have continued from their home countries? Bookmapping projects allow students to experience places that they may not have necessarily visited and create (or continue) their own study abroad story. Before showcasing the class assignment, I will provide some background information, specifically the course’s overall theme and how this bookmapping

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project aligned with the class objectives. In SPAN102: Fundamentals of Spanish Language & Culture II, formerly SPAN120, at Amherst College, the theme of travel played a key role in the curriculum. Throughout the semester, several assignments and material, including readings and films, incorporated the theme of travel. Students read Verónica Moscoso’s Los ojos de Carmen (2005), a short novel about Daniel, an American boy who travels to Ecuador. There, he visits relatives while practicing his Spanish and honing his photography skills. While Daniel and his extended family travel extensively around Ecuador, he takes photos for a photography contest. During his stay, he comes across several culturally challenging situations, particularly when he meets Carmen, a young indigenous girl. His interactions with her become eyeopening moments, specifically to the discrimination that indigenous groups experience in Latin America. For homework, students uploaded original photos on their Instagram accounts in response to prompts related to different themes in each chapter (see Chapter 2). In addition to Moscoso’s comprehensive reader, students watched and discussed Diarios de motocicleta (2004), María llena eres de gracia (2004), Qué tan lejos (2006), and Coco (2017), four films that touch on literal and figurative forms of travel. In Diarios de motocicleta, viewers follow Ernesto “Che” Guevara and his friend, Alberto Granado, as they ride motorcycles from Brazil to Peru, witnessing the great disparities in South America in the early 1950s. María llena eres de gracia follows the story of María, a pregnant and desperate seventeen-year-old Colombian girl who becomes a drug mule. Qué tan lejos tells the story of two young women who travel by bus through Ecuador’s countryside. When the bus breaks down, the two women undergo a journey of self-discovery. Finally, using Mexico’s Day of the Dead as a focal point, Coco, an animated Pixar film, depicts Miguel’s excursion to the Land of the Dead where he learns more about his ancestry and the value of family in Latin American culture. Such was the emphasis on travel that when I taught the course, I altered the names of the traditional syllabus headings to situate students in the travel mindset: travel plan (course description), travel itinerary (course objectives), passport and visa requirements (course material), meeting travel companions (participation and attendance), pictures and souvenirs (assessments), and tips for a smooth trip (information pertaining to office hours, academic honesty policy, and learning accommodations). In the syllabus, I also referred to myself as a tour guide, prepared to answer any questions if students found themselves “lost” throughout the journey. To complement the course, students had weekly discussions with a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) from Argentina. These fifty-minute sessions emphasized conversation and culture. In the syllabus, the FLTA was referred to as the cultural expert. In a short paragraph at the end of the syllabus, I shared my

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own travel narrative, namely how a trip to Madrid, Spain during my junior year abroad was transformative in pushing me to reconsider my academic and personal goals and move to Spain after college to study the language and culture of my family. The creative style of this syllabus established a friendly, open tone, which is fundamental to motivate students (Harnish and Bridges, 2011). It also emphasized the value of culture in a language course. Studying a world language is similar to embarking on a trip. Language learning is not a simple journey; it is a process, and acquisition takes time and patience. It can lead students up a winding road, with many twists and turns. At times, they feel like they finally “get it,” but at other points, it can make students feel like they hit a wall, when they feel like they are no longer progressing. Eventually, the more time that students immerse themselves in the language and culture, whether it is through physical travel, films, books, conversations with native speakers, and digital resources, the more they realize how rich communication and culture can be. After watching films and reading about different forms of travel in various Spanish-speaking countries, it was only natural that SPAN102 students became the protagonists of their own story. Diary entries are ideal for bookmapping assignments, as they are one of the most intimate forms of writing. Students can share their stories and personal thoughts based on their travel experience. An additional benefit of having students share their travel stories through a diary is that many will already be familiar with the genre. Travelers often document their trips by writing their thoughts in a physical or digital journal. This journal transforms into a memento that travelers look back on to relive special moments. For Generation Zers, who may be more inclined to share their thoughts and feelings virtually, several online journals exist, like Penzu, LiveJournal, Evernote, and Day One. Social media is another appealing option for Gen Zers wishing to showcase their travels with text and visuals. They may prefer to upload photos to their Instagram or Facebook accounts, tagging their physical location, and sharing their recommendations and personal reflections in the caption. Users who do not want to broadcast their whole lives on the Internet, but still use technology privately may prefer to document their journey using the Notes function on their phone or by recording audio messages. The course’s final bookmapping project consisted of a written narrative, in the form of a diary, about students’ fictitious experience virtually traveling to a Spanish-speaking country. Specifically, students transformed into authors of travel literature. They had to travel to at least two cities or towns in a Spanish-speaking country. Working in groups of two or three, students wrote five 1.5–2 pages, double spaced entries using Google Docs, a collaborative writing tool. The content of students’ entries principally came from online sources: airline and hotel websites, restaurant menus and reviews,

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museum virtual tours, and social media. Throughout the project, students developed their reading, listening, and writing skills, as they were continuously researching information online, listening to videos and guided tours, and writing in Spanish. Below is the project description that students received to complete the travel diary: FINAL PROJECT: DIARIOS DE SPAN102 Project Description: As a first-person narrative, a diary is frequently a form of self-reflection, a means by which writers can meditate on their thoughts and emotions. Diaries, however, can also be used to describe and comment on events, society, and culture. Since diaries are usually kept private, writers tend to be franker in their entries than if they were writing for a specific public. In pairs, you will use Google Doc and Google Tour Builder to create an epistolary fictional narrative about your experience in a Spanish-speaking country. The diary should include a reflection on the travel experience and comparison/contrast between the target and home country. You will map out your trip by researching material online to create a realistic account of your travel adventures. You will research housing accommodations, food options, public transportation, historical landmarks, and other cultural phenomena. This information should be accurate. Ideas to comment on: Art and architecture Culture Economy Entertainment (films, movies, books, theater, dance, concerts, etc.) Fashion Folklore Gastronomy (restaurants, cafés, bars, markets, etc.) History Landmarks (museums, churches, World Heritage sites, plazas, etc.) Lodging (hostels, hotels, camping, etc.) Nature Night life Personal reflection Politics Recommendations Sports

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Transportation Weather Because this is a fictional narrative, you will also add creative elements to your story. Some ideas to consider including: • Background information that will help readers understand the main character(s). • Clear descriptions of places and people so readers feel as if they know both well. • Dialogue with other characters, perhaps native speakers of the target country, or so-called experts of the place. Not only did students present facts and share observations on the countries that they virtually visited and the cultures that they encountered, their diary entries also included reflections. Personal stories, like autobiographical narratives, are a self-discovery tool. The digital storytelling movement, which began in San Francisco, used personal stories as a method for therapy (Boase 2013, 1). These stories require a deeper interpretation as they often highlight experiences. Catherine Boase refers to digital storytelling as a “powerful tool of emancipation, revelation and discovery” (2013, 1). Because SPAN102 students wrote their stories as a diary entry, in the first-person narrative, reflection was expected and often occurred naturally. In addition to reflection, language acquisition is a major focus of this assignment. As mentioned in the introduction, ACTFL’s performance descriptors describe how language learners use the language across three ranges of performance (Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced). Assignments targeting presentational communication will vary depending on the language level. While a Novice learner could write a text message, an Intermediate or Advanced student could write something more complex, like a research report, an opinion piece, or something more creative, like a bookmapping project. According to ACTFL’s Performance Descriptors (2012, 19), at the Intermediate level, which is the majority of SPAN102, students will have the skills listed below: Language Control • Control of language is sufficient to be understood by audiences accustomed to the language produced by language learners. With practice, polish, or editing, may show emerging evidence of Advanced-level language control. Vocabulary

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• Produces vocabulary on a variety of everyday topics, topics of personal interest, and topics that have been studied. Communication Strategies (may employ some or all of the following strategies to communicate and maintain audience interest) • Show an increasing awareness of errors and able to self-correct or edit. • Use phrases, imagery, or content. • Simplify. • Use known language to compensate for missing vocabulary. • Use graphic organizer. • Use reference resources as appropriate. Cultural Awareness • Uses some culturally appropriate vocabulary, expressions, and gestures. Reflect some knowledge of cultural differences related to written and spoken communication. Although these performance descriptors were not explicitly included in the assignment instructions, a detail that I would consider modifying for future courses, they were nevertheless present when I designed the activity. To guide students through the research phase (and provide students with resources), the course syllabus included a list of references and digital tools to help students search for information in the target language using popular search engines from each Spanish-speaking country. Students cited their resources and included a bibliography at the end of each diary entry so that I could make sure that the sources were primarily in Spanish. As with any trip, like a semester abroad, planning is essential: students choose a country, submit necessary documents, budget their finances, and create a packing list. Similarly, before writing a fictitious travel story, it is necessary for students to plan out the setting, characters, and general plot. Although these can change as the story develops, the basic storyline should be established before writing begins. This project describes a decision-making task: students had to work together to come up with an itinerary and plot. Before students submitted their first diary entry, they had to complete a storyboard. Because storyboards include several tasks, it is an ideal collaborative activity for small groups. The traditional storyboard consists of drawing a rough sketch of the narration in small squares with a few lines for text below each square. This pre-writing activity appeals to visual learners especially, as they can easily see an outline of the project along with supporting text. In general, storyboards permit students to focus on the content and ensure that they do not miss any important details (Burg and Cavanaugh 2011, 51–52). It also helps students concentrate on the task and be selective: quality over quantity! Often with these diaries, students cram several days’ worth of sightseeing into one day. As a result, their diary entries lack sustenance and

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read as descriptions found in guidebooks instead. This is similar to when students plan a day trip and include multiples places on their itinerary. Those who succeed in seeing every stop on their list usually only skim the surface at each of these places. Rather than take their time at each location, they rush through the visit and see very little. Storyboards push students purposefully to reflect on which spaces they want to visit and what information is essential to share in their story so that it is engaging, interesting, and eye-opening. Storyboards hinder students from simply plugging information into Google and regurgitating what they have discovered. Each square or representation on the storyboard plays an important role in the story development and guides students’ journey. As part of their storyboard, SPAN102 students selected a country, two cities or towns to visit, and different cultural sites that interested them like museums, restaurants, and natural attractions. In this regard, the storyboard transformed into a visual roadmap. Burg and Cavanaugh reference several online programs and digital tools to create storyboards, like PowerPoint and Incompetech (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 53–55). Since the publication of their book in 2011, other programs have emerged, like Boords, studiobinder, and storyboardthat, which provide free online storyboard templates. To promote collaboration and creativity, two skills listed in the 21st Century World Language Skills map, instructors may prefer that students use Google Slides or Google Jamboard. After completing their final bookmapping assignments, students can submit a reflection in which they compare and contrast their original storyboard to the final product, and comment on how and why the plot, characters, or setting may have changed. This post-assignment reflection encourages students to consider, observe, and understand the story’s (and trip’s) trajectory on a deeper level, specifically how their group’s decision to include certain material shaped their thinking (and trip). For example, students may notice how their preconceived ideas about certain cultures, peoples, and places were inaccurate and perhaps offensive. By doing this exercise, students develop critical thinking skills, twenty-first-century skills, and become agents of their own learning. Students had the freedom to choose the content and develop the plot of their travelogues, but some structure was necessary to hone their language skills and reinforce the textbook chapter content. Below is a sample of grammar topics that students were asked to include in their entries: Entry 1: Preterite and imperfect; ser and estar Entry 2: Preterite and imperfect; por and para; adverbs and adjectives Entry 3: Past participle Entry 4: Present subjunctive Entry 5: Future

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An essential benchmark for Intermediate language learners, according to ACTFL, is to narrate a story using the past tense and to express opinions and feelings with the subjunctive. Distinguishing between the imperfect and preterite tense is challenging for students. Textbook activities to review these two tenses usually consist of fill-in-the-blank exercises that do not fully assess students’ overall understanding of the verb tense. Students tend to look for words in the sentences that indicate a time frame like siempre (always) or ayer (yesterday), and mechanically select the correct verb tense accordingly. A task in which students retell a fictional story based on travel in the past tense is considered more authentic. Students will, at one point or another in their lives, retell a story in the past tense, perhaps in connection with travel, a book, or film plot. As part of the diary draft, instructors can require students to underline each of the past tense verbs and identify its function, pushing them to reflect on their choice of tenses and to discern the difference between the two. In a similar manner, the subjunctive mood can also be practiced more naturally through storytelling, especially in connection to travel. Recommendations to visit certain restaurants, cultural sites, shopping areas, or specific public transportation, are scattered throughout the SPAN102 diary entries. In the diary entries, students “met” locals who recommended restaurants, specific dishes to try, and historical landmarks. One group, who traveled to Arica, a port city in northern Chile, participated in a snorkeling class. After class, the instructor recommended a restaurant to the group: El instructor de nuestra lección por la mañana dijo, ‘¡Les recomiendo que coman en Maracuyo, porque es un sitio excelente!’ Él nos dijo la verdad. Comimos en el restaurante ‘Maracuyo’ para probar el plato que se llama ‘Fetuccini Frutos del Mar,’ que costaba 10.3 pesos. Había una vista del Pacífico con unas olas azules y la puesta de sol. Aunque el restaurante era elegante, tenía buenos precios para su comida. Insisto en que veas su página de Instagram. Incluí el enlace al final de mi entrada. Puedes ver todas las fotos. ¡Yo seguí a ellos con mi Instagram para la clase de español! [This morning, our lesson instructor told us, ‘I recommend that you eat in Maracuyo, because it’s an excellent restaurant!’ He told us the truth. We ate at Maracuyo and tried the dish, ‘Fettuccini Frutos del Mar,’ which cost 10.3 pesos. There was a view of the Pacific Ocean with its blue waves and the sunset. Although the restaurant was elegant, it had reasonable prices. I insist that you visit their Instagram page. I included a link at the end of my entry. You can see all the photos. I am following them on my Instagram!]2

Not only is it remarkable that the group used the subjunctive mood twice in one paragraph, and with different verbs, but they also searched for the restaurant’s Instagram account to paint an accurate description of the setting,

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an impressive view of the Pacific Ocean and the beautiful sunset captured in several photos. Despite the physical distance between the students and the restaurant, social media helped bridge the gap and made the experience come alive (see Chapter 2), so much so that they ended up following the restaurant on their personal Instagram account. Besides using specific grammatical structures in their diary entries, students recycled textbook vocabulary like airport/travel, clothes, food, and body parts, all of which form part of students’ daily adventures. When traveling, they needed to purchase tickets at the train station; when packing for a day trip to a nearby island, they needed to consider what clothes to pack; and since first-time travelers often become sick from changes in altitude or after eating a new dish, learning how to ask for certain medications from the pharmacist or communicating with a doctor was crucial. This material also provides students with practical vocabulary and, to a certain extent, experience before embarking on an adventure like studying abroad for a semester or year. Because the bookmapping project is student-driven, the groups also collected new words not listed in their textbooks. One group, for example, expanded their animal vocabulary significantly after a visit to the Valdes Peninsula, a Patagonian nature reserve on the coast of Argentina: Allá, vimos tantos tipos de animales: los leones marinos, elefantes marinos, guanacos (llamas), maras (conejos), zorros, armadillos y choiques (avestruces pequeños, ‘rheas’ en inglés) Con su cámara, Sehee sacó muchas fotos de los animales. ¡Todos son lindos! [There, we saw so many types of animals: sea lions, elephant seals, llamas, rabbits, foxes, armadillos, and small ostriches, ‘rheas’ in English. Sehee took photos of the animals with her camera. They are all pretty!]

Interestingly, some of these words come from Quechua, a detail that is mentioned by the group later in the entry. It is evident that students looked up unfamiliar words, noting their counterpart or a similar animal in parentheses, helping the reader understand or imagine the new animal and fulfilling ACTFL’s Comparison standard. The description ends with the colloquial expression, characteristic of the Southern Cone, lindo, meaning beautiful or pretty. In addition to including specific grammar and vocabulary, students honed their creative writing skills in these diary entries, starting with the document’s form. Each diary entry included a greeting and closing. While some students included the traditional ¡Hola! (Hello!) or ¡Saludos! (Greetings!), others took on the role of travel writers and started their entries with Querido diario (Dear diary). Several students incorporated informal expressions that had

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been mentioned in class or in the films, beginning their diary entry with,¿Qué onda? (What’s up?) and ending with, Un beso (a kiss) or Un abrazo (a hug), followed by their names. These greetings are useful for writing emails and text messages in Spanish as well. The collaborative nature of the diary lends well to a colloquial writing style and tone that differs from the scholarly essays that students are accustomed to. According to Craig Eilert Abrahamson, “storytelling promotes expressive language development in both speech and written composition, as well as receptive language development in both reading and listening” (1998, 441). Because these diary entries were eventually shared with the entire class, students employed persuasive language to encourage their fellow classmates to travel and visit these places in the future. Colloquial words, rhetorical questions, and exclamations, such as ¡Por supuesto! (Of course!) and ¡Qué guay! (How cool!) are dispersed throughout the entries. Risk-taking can also lead to a more creative, personal writing style. One group, for example, visited the Amazon rainforest and rather than share what they saw, they described what they heard in great detail: ¡La selva amazónica es muy ruidosa! Constantemente, oíamos las canciones de los pájaros, los sonidos de los torrentes de agua, y muchos otros sonidos muy raros. En la selva tropical había muchos croas de ranas, píos de pájaros, e i-i-i de los monos. Al principio, el ruido era un poco aterrador, pero después de una hora, estábamos cómodos con los sonidos de la selva. [The Amazon Rainforest is noisy! We constantly heard the songs of birds, the sound of water flowing, and other very strange noises. In the tropical rainforest there were many frog croaks, birds singing, and the hoo hoo hoo hoo of monkeys. At the beginning, the noise was a little scary, but after an hour, we were comfortable with the rainforest sounds.]

Bookmapping helps promote target language development in innovative ways, playing with different styles and words that expand students’ vocabulary, like onomatopoeia expressions, and help them become stronger writers. In a similar vein, the fictitious diary entries written by a group frequently produce a narrative that includes dialogue, as seen earlier between the snorkeling instructor and the students. Narrative is essential to any writing curriculum, but it is a genre that often disappears as students advance in their academic careers unless they pursue a degree in creative writing. Incorporating fictional writing into a language class has many benefits. It encourages students to use their imagination in a second or third language and exposes them to more vocabulary since they rely on their creativity rather than the textbook themes and wordlists to create their content.

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Much like in real-life travel, unexpected events and ideas occur, most of which reveal how people adapt during stressful moments. Some travelers may take unexpected news in stride and with a sense of humor, while others may grow frustrated. These unpredictable moments make the project real and drive the narrative: The map draws fiction into a recognizable spatial reality. The situation needs to be envisaged in a symmetrical manner, such as that a given fictive adventure can take place in an area that is generally taken to be real, that can be located and grasped, an area where the reader might eventually go, which also means that this area contains unsuspected, unexpected, imperceptible narrative powers in current evocations of the same setting. (Besse 2017, 31)

New adventures in unfamiliar, yet existing places provide students with a unique backdrop in which they can be inventive and original with their language. When fiction is inscribed onto a real space, the setting becomes a playground of sorts where the author can try new things (Besse 2017, 31). These projects, therefore, push students out of their academic comfort zone and encourage them to try new verb tenses, discover new vocabulary, and insert their personality into the work. By writing narratives with no pressure to “sound” academic, some students found an authentic voice with this assignment, inserting humor in the narrative. One such group traveled to Cuba; their flight from Boston showed the film, Fast and Furious 8 (2017). Two of the students fell asleep during the flight, missing the film viewing, which angered the other student because the film takes place in Havana. Once their plane landed and the group was in the city, the student-fan of Fast and Furious 8 transformed into a tour guide, sharing his knowledge of the Cuban capital and important cultural sites courtesy of the film: El Malecón es una calle fantástica y está al lado del océano. Es más de ocho km y me gustó mirar los coches viejos. En mi opinión, es una de las calles más bonitas en todo el mundo. En mi película favorita, ‘Fast and Furious 8,’ hay una escena con el Castillo de los Tres Reyes Del Morro. Es una fortaleza fuera de la ciudad y tiene una vista fantástica de Havana y es el mejor lugar en todo Cuba para mirar los atardeceres. Tiene más de 400 años y fue muy importante para proteger Havana en el pasado. [The Malecón is a fantastic roadway next to the ocean. It’s more than 8 kms. long and I enjoyed seeing the antique cars. In my opinion, it is one of the most beautiful streets in the world. In my favorite movie, ‘Fast and Furious 8,’ there is a scene with Morro Castle. It is a fortress on the outskirts of the city and it has a

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great view of Havana and it is the best place in all Cuba to see sunsets. It is more than 400 years old and it was very important in protecting Havana in the past.]

Although the group was grateful for their classmate’s knowledge on Cuba, the trip pace was brutal and they quickly grew tired: “Quedamos impresionados por Jack y su conocimiento, pero estuvimos cansados después de recorrer tan rápido como ‘Fast and Furious.’” / “We were impressed by Jack and his knowledge, but we were tired after touring as quickly as ‘Fast and Furious.’” Despite the tense moment triggered by exhaustion, the student included a pun to poke fun at his classmate’s obsession with the film and his quick pace. Although his fascination with the film provided comic relief and eased the group anxiety, it proved helpful as he later explained in detail the history of the Castle: Los británicos capturaron el castillo en 1762 durante la guerra de siete años. En esta guerra, la torre de ese castillo se derrumbó y los cubanos construyeron un faro en el lugar de la torre. En los años después de la guerra, el Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro era una escuela para los guardas de los faros. [The British captured the castle in 1762 during the Seven Years’ War. In this war, the castle tower was destroyed and the Cubans constructed a lighthouse in its place. After the war, the Morro Castle was a school for the lighthouse keepers.]

Bookmapping promotes creativity and playfulness in a way that is unique for language learners since they are given complete freedom to create their own story and to play with words. With these projects, students often build off of each other’s personalities and drive to write an engaging story. Some people may accept unexpected travel plans with a good sense of humor, but unforeseen circumstances can produce tension too. Since this assignment was written in pairs or small groups, students had to decide their destinations beforehand. As a result, active negotiation between characters often takes place. In one group, one member felt hungry and wanted to stop sightseeing to grab a bite to eat. This angered her partner, but fortunately her classmate’s good taste in restaurants appeased the moment: Solamente pasamos una hora en este museo, pero por alguna razón yo necesitaba más comida. Es dudoso que Adelaide esté contenta conmigo. Le dije, ‘Lo siento, pero me gustaría comer.’ Ella respondió, ‘¡No es posible que tengas hambre tan pronto! Pero tienes razón. Insisto en que comamos porque es de noche.’ Por eso, fuimos a Xanadú para tener una cena sofisticada. [We only spent a hour in this museum, but for some reason I needed to eat. It’s doubtful that Adelaide is happy with me. I told her, ‘I am sorry, but I’d like to

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eat.’ She responded, ‘It’s not possible that you are hungry so soon! But you are right. I insist that we eat because it’s nighttime.’ We went to Xanadú to eat a nice dinner.]

A significant part of traveling in groups involves compromise. Travelers may have to talk out their problems and be flexible until they reach an agreement. I like to think, for instance, that this pair really were not in agreement, which became the content of their diary entry. Nevertheless, tension can produce a positive result—in this case, numerous stops at delicious restaurants and cafés. A collaborative digital bookmapping project “encourag[es] social reflection and producing mutual understanding and potentially, social cohesion” (Boase 2013, 8), which contributes to the creation of a meaningful final result. Students worked as a group during their trip, dealing with numerous challenges along the way, which, as a result, produced a sense of empathy necessary to tackle difficult and new tasks. This, in turn, created a stronger community. Writing in a different genre, recycling vocabulary, reinforcing grammar topics from the textbook, and trying out new colloquial expressions contributed to SPAN102 students’ increased linguistic proficiency. When asked to rate how much their Spanish had improved in a self-evaluation based on ACTFL’s proficiency scale, all students noted an improvement by at least half a level. By the end of the semester, almost all students had reached an Intermediate mid proficiency, an ideal level to tackle the next course in the Amherst College curriculum, SPAN201: Intermediate Spanish Language & Culture. This was evident in both the length of the students’ diary entries and in the complexity of their writing in later assignments. Students often wrote more than two pages, including dialogue and images to support their ideas. Their attention to detail and drive to write more than expected reflected their high level of engagement and commitment to the assignment. Toward the end of the diary entries, students consistently included more complex verb tenses like the pluperfect, seamlessly alternated between the subjunctive and indicative mood, and incorporated connectors, like por ejemplo (of course) and sin embargo (however) to create coherence and a stronger narrative. The grammatical prompts given to students in the project instructions acted merely as a guide. These types of projects, therefore, are also ideal for a class with mixed language levels and for those teachers dedicated to differentiated instruction, a pedagogical approach to meet the individual needs of students. Students’ improved writing skills can not only be attributed to continuous practice, but also to reading various genres: blogs, maps, restaurant reviews, and virtual museum exhibitions. These short but substantial texts develop students’ reading comprehension and analytical skills and deepen their cultural understanding—all of which enhance their diary entries.

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MAPPING CULTURE Listed first among ACTFL’s 5 Cs, communication is important to language study, but culture is the driving force behind language learning and the main theme behind the Amherst College travel diary assignment. After all, world language students do not travel to a new country simply to hone their language skills. They want to see a famous art piece with their own eyes, eat choripán from a street vendor after watching a soccer match, and buy fresh products from the local market. Culture drives students to pursue language study and to travel to a new country, not the subjunctive mood. It helps students better understand not only the culture of the country where they are studying, but their own culture. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the Intermediate Spanish bookmapping project, students inevitably gain broad, cultural knowledge on the country that they “visit,” therefore fulfilling ACTFL’s Culture standard. They understand the cultural practices, perspectives, and products that make a country unique. Through digital maps and other online resources, students “visit” museums, “eat” at popular restaurants, “travel” on public transportation, and “watch” a theater performance. When students “work [. . .] with digital maps and literature, greater opportunities arise to work in the context of culture studies” (Philips 2021, 644). The cultural options are endless. Despite being fictitious, the bookmapping project is, in its essence, authentic. Before visiting a new country, travelers need to consider several factors, like the trip duration, location, necessary paperwork, personal interests, health and age, safety, and finances. Students’ diary entries took into account many of these elements, especially money. In general, they were mindful of their finances, reflecting the reality of most college-age students who have limited budgets. When students mentioned the price of tickets, food, and lodging, they usually included the price in the host country’s currency with the equivalency in American dollars in parenthesis. This detail speaks volumes to students’ attention to money and desire to understand if the product was affordable or not under their own terms. Vocabulary related to money is dispersed throughout the diary entries, including colloquial expressions, like una ganga, or “a steal or deal”: “Ella dijo que el hotel estaba teniendo una ganga y un cuarto era $90 por día. ¡Qué ganga para un hotel de cinco estrellas! / She said that the hotel was having a deal and one room was $90 a day. What a steal for a five-star hotel!” One group who visited Nicaragua shared how they decided to get around Managua, the capital city, based on their financial necessities: No queríamos usar un carro para ir allí porque es caro. ¡Necesitamos ahorrar! No queríamos tomar el autobús porque no queríamos estar cerca de la gente.

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Decidimos usar bicicletas urbanas porque la plaza y el palacio estaban a una hora de distancia a pie, ¡y eso fue mucho tiempo! Las bicicletas de la ciudad se veían lindas. Estábamos felices de andar en bicicleta y hacer ejercicio. [We didn’t want to use a car to go there because it’s expensive. We need to save! We didn’t want to take a bus because we didn’t want to be close to people. We decided to use street bikes because the plaza and the palace were an hour away walking, and that’s a lot of time! The street bikes looked nice. We were happy to ride a bike and exercise.]

Although these details may seem trivial, they are necessary to set the trip into motion and to ensure a smooth journey. Rental cars are expensive, and the public bus would have put the students in close contact with people, something that they were trying to avoid during the global pandemic. Naturally, the bicycle was the most affordable option, yet as their entry on the following day remarked, probably not the safest idea: Había mucho tráfico en la ciudad. ¡Casi nos atropella un coche! ¡Nos alegramos de tener cascos para nuestras cabezas! Estaba enojado, pero el conductor se disculpó. Después, llegamos al Malecón de forma segura y sin otros incidentes. (my emphasis) [There was a lot of traffic in the city. A car almost hit us! We were happy to be wearing helmets to protect our heads! I was angry because the driver didn’t apologize. Later, we arrived to the Malecón safely and without further incident.] (my emphasis)

Heavy traffic in Managua made it challenging to get around, but the group felt fortunate to be wearing bike helmets. These details make the trip seem more real. The two students were fully immersed in the difficult feat of riding a bike in a busy Latin American city during peak hour, bracing themselves for the worst-case scenario, but ultimately arriving safely to their destination. Another group who traveled to Guadalajara, Mexico, paid only nine dollars to sleep in a hostel that was “deprimente/depressing” with “ninguna pieza de arte o decoraciones elaboradas/no artwork or decorations,” but they did not care for the lack of decorations: “Por el mismo precio, no había ningún hostal que tuviera una habitación con dos camas y un baño. / For the same price, there were no hostels with a room with two beds and a bathroom.” For this group, the hostel’s cheap rate outweighed the aesthetics. Similarly, during other moments on their trip, students had to choose between different activities, and the price was often the deciding factor. One group, for example, bought a frisbee for five dollars to entertain themselves for an hour rather than going horseback riding, which exceeded their budget. The authenticity

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of this assignment prepares students for future excursions, namely the value of budgeting in advance. Part of traveling smartly is knowing what to expect as much as possible before the trip. It is important to stay safe and responsible, which includes managing your budget and embracing adventures that give travelers an opportunity to see a city from a new perspective. Often unexpected moments transform into a learning experience and a better understanding of the host country’s culture. A group who traveled from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, Argentina, tried to reserve an Uber at the airport, but they learned that they were not legal (at the time of the project), so they had to call a taxi. This was surprising to the group given how popular rideshares are in the United States, so one of the students asked the taxi driver why Ubers were prohibited: Nos dijo que la ciudad perseguía a la empresa por la evasión fiscal. Además, expresó su disgusto por la compañía, explicando que los taxis estaban en competencia directa. Nos parecía tan caro el viaje porque los pesos argentinos valen mucho menos que los dólares americanos. A pesar del costo adicional, cuando usted paga a un conductor por su servicio, es importante que le dé una propina. [He told us that the city was going after Uber due to tax evasion. Additionally, he expressed his disdain for the company, explaining that taxis were competing directly with Uber. The trip seemed so expensive because Argentine pesos are worth less than American dollars. Despite the additional cost, when you pay for the service, it is important that you give the driver a trip.]

When Uber arrived in Buenos Aires in 2016, tension emerged because the company did not comply with the regulations that taxis must adhere to. Fueled by rising inflation, violence escalated between taxi and Uber drivers, as the latter had undercut taxi fares. This detail is important for today’s college students who view rideshares as the most popular and affordable option in the United States. The group’s advice to tip taxi drivers is also helpful. In my comments on their draft, I shared with the students that tipping drivers in Argentina is not expected like in the United States, but nonetheless, is appreciated, and most travelers round to the nearest peso, a detail that they included in the final draft. Students’ entries often include helpful information gathered from other travelers’ reviews, a website, or perhaps from personal experiences. One group who traveled to Barcelona, Spain, visited La Sagrada Familia. After a lengthy description of the beautiful basilica constructed by Antonio Gaudí, the group shared the following tip:

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Para poder entrar a la iglesia, teníamos que llevar ropa conservadora como pantalones y camisas de manga larga. Por suerte, el tiempo era no caliente y disfrutamos mucho. [In order to enter a church, we had to wear conservative clothing like pants and long sleeve shirts. Luckily, it was not hot outside, and we enjoyed the visit.]

Not only did students recycle textbook vocabulary related to clothing, but they were also able to share the dress code expected when entering Catholic churches, especially overseas. This advice may prove helpful to future travelers, especially when considering clothing for the day and planning for a specific site visit. In a similar vein, another group who traveled to Buenos Aires decided to spend a large part of their day in the Casa Rosada, the pink governmental building that houses the President’s office: Gracias al consejo de la chica que nos encontramos ayer, usamos la app ‘Moovit’ para encontrar un autobús para la Casa Rosada. Las visitas en la Casa Rosada típicamente empezaban a mediodía cada sábado, así que subimos al autobús a las diez y media para llegar al área de Casa Rosada temprana. Estábamos un poco preocupadas que hubiera un problema con el autobús porque el viernes pasado, un autobús se incendió cerca de la Casa Rosada. Vimos fotos en las noticias; ¡había bomberos y una gran nube de humo en el cielo! [Thanks to the advice from the girl we met yesterday, we used the app ‘Moovit’ to find a bus to go to the Casa Rosada. Visits to the Casa Rosada typically begin at noon on Saturdays, so we took the 10:30 am bus to arrive early to the area near the Casa Rosada. We were a little worried that there would be a problem with the bus because last Friday, a bus caught on fire near the Casa Rosada. We saw pictures in the news; there were firefighters and a big black cloud of smoke in the sky!]

Taking into consideration a bus fire that occurred the previous week, the two students gave themselves extra travel time to arrive promptly at the Casa Rosada for visiting hours. Their entry is a perfect example of how bookmapping assignments combine fiction with reality. The students reference a real bus fire in Buenos Aires, close to the Casa Rosada, that they discovered while researching and used the Twitter photo showcased in the article to describe the scene (the big black smoke) (RT Actualidad). The group also mentioned Moovit, a popular transit app that provides schedules, maps, and real-time arrival information so travelers get to their destination on time and safely. Not only did this group share the helpful tip of using the app Moovit to plan their trip, but they also expressed real concerns, specifically the importance of

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allotting extra time for travel, especially in a new place, and being prepared for anything and everything while traveling. Once students learned to navigate the public transportation system and determined which cultural spots they wanted to visit, food was the next priority. It made up a significant portion of students’ diary entries. Online restaurant reviews and blogs allowed students to “try” local dishes in popular restaurants and cafés. Their visits to these spots fueled (quite literally) their travel adventures. Photos of new dishes, typically found through Google images, restaurant websites, or social media, helped students include detailed descriptions and make cultural comparisons, another ACTFL C. A group that traveled to Granada, Spain, shared their experience tasting different tapas in Restaurante Carmela: Compartimos tres tapas: croquetas de morcilla con cebolla caramelizada, berenjenas fritas con miel de caña y tosta de remojón granadino [. . .] nunca habíamos comido morcilla antes de esta experiencia. Es un tipo de salchicha llena de sangre de cerdo, arroz, cebollas, y otras especias. La forma de las croquetas eran similares a las croquetas de mozzarella que comemos en los bares y otros restaurantes en los Estados Unidos. (my emphasis) [We shared three tapas: blood sausage croquettes with caramelized onions, fried eggplant with molasses and a traditional salad dish from Granada . . . we had never eaten blood sausage before this experience. It is a type of sausage filled with pig’s blood, and it was served with rice, onions, and other spices. The shape of the croquettes were similar to the mozzarella sticks that we eat in bars and other restaurants in the United States.] (my emphasis)

Although neither of the students had tried morcilla, or blood sausage, before, by looking at an image online, they were able to compare it to a sausage. The group also compared the shape of the croquetas de morcilla to that of mozzarella sticks, a popular finger food in the United States. These comparisons force students to reflect on the places that they are visiting and the activities that they are participating in, albeit virtually, and consider places that they have visited and activities they have done in the past. What makes them similar or different, and why? What do the similarities and differences expose? These questions prompt students to challenge their preconceptions, allowing them to develop their personal identity in an innovative way. The students’ experience “trying” croquetas de morcilla also shows their willingness to step out of their comfort level and expose themselves to something new, an underlying objective of sharing stories directly related to course content: “If applied properly it will help [students] abandon some of the limitations of their common everyday world views so that they can achieve a state of receptivity to the educational process that they are experiencing”

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(Abrahamson 1998, 443). Indeed, what makes this project so notable is that although students are not actually on these trips, they feel empowered nonetheless to have these new experiences. The comparison makes a new dish immediately relatable to a public unfamiliar with these foods. Unbeknownst to students, their obsession with food frequently transformed into a history lesson, as one group who traveled to Cuba shared: Encontramos un museo muy único, ‘La Casa del Ron’ y aprendimos la historia del ron en Cuba. Es increíble que el ron sea el licor más viejo de la isla; llegó a Cuba en 1511. [We found a very unique museum, “The House of Rum” and learned about the history of rum in Cuba. It is incredible that rum is the island’s oldest liquor; it arrived in Cuba in 1511.]

While students may have chosen this museum because of their experience drinking rum, they ended up being equally intrigued by the drink’s origin. This information, not typically included in textbooks, further engages students with the culture of the countries whose language they are studying in an exciting and fun way. As seen with the rum example, the bookmapping project is entirely student-driven. Students choose the country they want to explore and each of the stops during their trip. As a result, the spaces they decide to visit interest them, which is a crucial step to engaging them on a deeper level with the material. Although some students chose to explore well-known cultural and historical sites, others researched less popular spots. For instance, one group visited Cuzco, Peru. Instead of traveling first to the popular destination, Machu Picchu, they chose to explore Sacsayhuaman, a collection of archeological sites near the city. At the end of the detailed description of their visit, the narrators wrote: “A Ana le encanta la historia. Cuando era niña, iba mucho a museos con sus papás. / Ana loves history. When she was younger, she frequently visited museums with her parents.” Students’ selections reflected their interests, some of which stemmed from their childhood memories and experiences. They not only made academic connections but also discovered a way to make the content relatable and relevant to their personal lives. Students personalize what they learn, building off each other’s creativity, prior knowledge, and personal interests. One student group, intrigued by Spain’s rich history and art, visited Granada. Their first stop was the Alhambra. Below is a detailed description of the students’ visit to the palace: La Alhambra era tan grande que no teníamos tiempo para explorar todas las atracciones. Sin embargo, pudimos ver muchas iglesias bonitas, edificios con arquitectura impresionante y jardines que reflejaban la belleza de la naturaleza.

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También nos sorprendimos que hubiera una mezcla de varias culturas en el palacio. Por los moros que vivían en España, muchos edificios tenían arquitectura influenciada por los moros. Un ejemplo de la influencia islámica es los muros almenados que ayudaban los moros que estaban defendiendo el palacio desde los españoles. Sin embargo, había unos edificios que no fue construido en el estilo de los moros. Por ejemplo, el Palacio de Carlos V era diferente del resto de los edificios en la Alhambra porque fue construido en el estilo romano. Nuestra guía nos dijo que el palacio representa el poder del cristianismo sobre la religión islámica. [The Alhambra was so big that we didn’t have time to explore all of its attractions. However, we could see its beautiful churches, buildings with impressive architecture, and gardens that reflect nature’s beauty. We also were surprised that there were a mix of various cultures in the palace. Because of the Moors who lived in Spain, many buildings had architecture with an Islamic influence. One example is the battlemented walls that helped the Moors who were defending the palace from the Spaniards. However, there were some buildings that were not constructed in an Islamic style. For example, Charles V’s Palace was different from the rest of the buildings in the Alhambra because it was built in the Roman style. Our guide told us that the palace represents the power of Christianity over Islamic religion.]

Toward the end of the entry, the group delves into the complicated relationship between the Moors and Christians in Spain. If a language textbook highlights the city of Granada, the Alhambra may be mentioned, and a few images may accompany a short descriptive text, but rarely do these cultural sections go in-depth. Student-centered, interdisciplinary projects encourage students to explore topics and themes beyond the textbook curriculum and make connections, another ACTFL C, with other classes and subjects, like art history and European history. In this diary entry, the different art styles on display greatly interested the students. When students connect the target language of study and other course topics and personal interests, language learning takes on an interdisciplinary dimension. The knowledge that students have acquired in other courses can benefit their language learning studies, exposing them to new perspectives and information. Students build their vocabulary through their research and writing. Because the topic is relevant and situated in an authentic text, it is more likely that students will recall the material—much more so than an extensive vocabulary list with no context. Connections were also made to popular cultural references beyond the academic space. When this same group traveled to Sevilla, they discovered something surprising about the Real Alcázar: it appears in the popular television series, “Game of Thrones.” These references expose students’ high level of immersion and

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engagement and make something new and unknown familiar and, therefore, more appealing. Students also made connections by elaborating on class material in their diary entries. For instance, one group visited Chile to see Pablo Neruda’s house museum, La Chascona, in Santiago. Their interest in Neruda stemmed from an in-class activity analyzing the poem, “Oda a la alcachofa,” or “Ode to the Artichoke.” Their research on Neruda’s house revealed some interesting information about the author and his personal life: Neruda construyó la casa para su amante secreto, Matilde Urrutia, quien tenía un cabello rizado estupendo y rojizo. En Chile ‘La Chascona’ significa el cabello enredado y era el apodo que Neruda dio a su amante. Qué increíble, ¿no? [Neruda built this house for his secret lover, Maltide Urrutia, who had famously red curly hair. In Chile, ‘La Chascona’ means tangled one and it was a nickname that Neruda gave his lover. Amazing, right?]

This type of information is so specific and intimate that it is probable that a textbook would not include it. It is the type of tidbit that one usually learns abroad, during a tour of the house museum, or it is information that is passed on anecdotally via a native from the area or by an instructor who specializes in Neruda’s works. The group describes Neruda’s house as “muy bonita, pero más pequeña que supusimos. Los muebles eran bonitos y estaban hechos de madera / very beautiful, but smaller than we thought. The furniture was nice and was made of wood.” Although the house description lacks detail, the students’ observation regarding the size of the house museum is revealing. The students assumed that, as a Nobel Prize–winning poet, Neruda would have owned a larger, more impressive-looking house rather than the small, bright blue house with a balcony. When reading the first draft of their entry, I gently reminded the group that this house was built for his secret lover; Neruda owned three houses in total—the other two are located in Valparaíso and Isla Negra. For their presentation on the last day of the course, this group showcased their day visiting La Chascona and shared images of Neruda’s two other houses, all of which are considerably tall with large windows that offer beautiful views of the nearby park and ocean. La Chascona’s bright blue facade with its rounded architecture and railings resembles a ship. The house is surrounded by flowers, trees, and lush plants. This penchant for the outdoors is reflected in Neruda’s poetry, which often includes images of nature to express his relationship with women. During their presentation, the two students showed titles and fragments from Neruda’s odes that reflect his love for nature, specifically plants, animals, and seasons.

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In the second draft of their diary and in their final presentation, the students elaborated on the interior of La Chascona, focusing on a portrait of Maltide painted by Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, the famous husband of Frida Kahlo, another Mexican artist. Maltide is shown with two heads, and hidden among her hair is a profile of Neruda’s face, perhaps a nod to the couple’s intimate affair. The mention of Rivera’s painting tied in nicely with prior class content. Earlier in the semester, while discussing Pixar’s Coco, in which Frida Kahlo appears briefly, the class studied a few of her paintings and read and analyzed a description in the imperfect and preterit tenses of the artist’s tumultuous relationship with Rivera. Projects that build on course content encourage students to make deeper connections beyond the classroom, which is unique, especially at an Intermediate level. In the world language classroom, poetry like Neruda’s odes and other authentic material expands students’ vocabulary. From the start of their language learning journey, students make linguistic comparisons. They attempt to find the equivalent vocabulary word or verb conjugation in their native language in order to better understand the structure of the target language. Although these types of comparisons may be helpful for the language learning process, noticing similarities and differences should not be limited to language. Cultural comparisons are important because they help shape students’ own awareness, as cited by ACTFL’s Cultures Standard: “as students expand their knowledge of cultures through language learning, they continually discover perspectives, practices, and products that are similar to and different from those in their own culture. They develop the ability to hypothesize about cultural systems” (National Standards, 2015). One group traveled to Puebla, Mexico, and shared in detail their bus travels. They included information not only on the price of the bus ticket but also a physical description: Por treinta y cinco dólares, compramos dos boletos de autobús. El autobús era muy grande y gris y rojo. Había el título de empresa en el autobús—ADO (se llamaba ‘ADO autobuses’). [For $35, we bought two bus tickets. The bus was very big and grey and red. The name of the bus company was on the bus—ADO (it was called ‘ADO buses’).]

One of the students, originally from Nepal, commented on the difference between the bus’ interior in his home country and Mexico: Todavía me sorprende que los autobuses en México sean muy cómodos y lujosos. En Nepal, los autobuses están en estados deprimentes. Los asientos no están en una condición aceptable.

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[I am still surprised that the buses in Mexico were very clean and luxurious. In Nepal, buses are in a terrible state. The condition of the seats is unacceptable.]

Comparing two cultures requires critical awareness and reflection, skills often missing in the lower language levels, and a fundamental step to cultural understanding. According to Arnold, NeCamp, and Sohan, “By recording detailed observations about the time they visited [marked by the date on the top of each diary entry] and the space itself, students examine their perceptions of the space (how does it look, what does it smell like, how does it feel?),” resulting in a “more nuanced understanding of their positioning in the world” (2015, 294; 2015, 298). This form of reflection, aimed at different senses, aligns well with the student-centered approach employed in many world language classrooms. It encourages students to take control of their learning and come to their own conclusions about specific topics. Before this project, this student from Nepal had assumed that Mexico’s buses would be in poor condition; he had imagined Mexico in an unfavorable way for whatever reason. Bookmapping assignments encourage students to see with their own eyes what places look like, challenge their misconceptions and, in general, stereotypes that perpetuate negative images, in this case, of Latin America. The project’s focus on observation and attention to detail helps students record more precise cultural musings in their diary entries and gain insight into how others may perceive them (Cutshall Nov. 2012, 34). Students consider “the conscious or subconscious understanding of what can be said to whom, how, and in what circumstances” (Cutshall Nov. 2012, 32), an essential component of the presentational mode and a successful time abroad experiencing a new culture and interacting with people. For instance, the group who traveled to Nicaragua was struck by the large number of tourists in Managua. Each of their diary entries mentioned how the tourists, especially those from the United States, were “ruidosos y molestos / noisy and annoying.” Embarrassed by their compatriots, the two students steered clear of them and spoke in the country’s native tongue, Spanish: “También conocimos a otros tres turistas estadounidenses, pero decidimos solo hablar español entre nosotros para practicar / We also met three other tourists from the United States, but we decided to speak Spanish among ourselves to practice.” This detail may seem trivial; however, it reflects the students’ engagement level and their drive to hone their Spanish skills. Although students’ journeys were fictitious, they required reflection that often resulted in a deeper understanding of their identity. Role-play often aided this type of meditation. As Josh A. Lerner points out, referring to digital games, but equally applicable to digital narrations: “role playing games in particular create compelling characters that let players experience and interact with different identities and points of view. Strong and vivid characters help players empathize with the

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game situation and live vicariously through it” (2014, 78). Role-play permitted the students to take on a new persona and experience a new culture and world through a different lens. These two students were aware of how Americans are often perceived abroad and chose to remain in the target language, aligning themselves with the native Nicaraguans. In this regard, bookmapped storytelling permits students to develop their “unique character, and their connection to the lived experience” (Lambert 2009, 40), thus solidifying their sense of identity. This in turn increases L2 students’ confidence, helping them to embrace their role as bona fide speakers of Spanish. BUILDING A TRAVEL COMMUNITY Bookmapping projects fulfill the Communities Standard, which states that learners “use the language within and beyond the school setting” and “show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment” (National Standards, 2015). A feeling of community was formed through the act of writing outside of class. For many students, storytelling was new or something they had not done in many years, and thus they responded enthusiastically, realizing there was no limit to their imagination. As Lambert points out, “stories lead to stories lead to stories” (2009, 9). More than once, students fed off their classmates’ creativity. The diary quickly took on a life of its own; each story transformed the conversation, the meaning, and the exchange into deeper and more intimate communication. Creating a digital travel narrative “encourages community, connecting diverse students through shared experience” (Lambert 2009, 160). This tight-knit connection between group members was often reflected in dialogues. Groups who included conversations in their diary entries concentrated on sharing this unique experience with their partner. These dialogues contain disagreements, resolutions, quarrels, shared excitement, and first times—all of which build a stronger bond between the partners. This relationship was apparent in the increasing use of the third-person plural pronoun, “nosotros,” or “we” in the diary entries. Students went from writing their diary entries individually, perhaps alternating paragraphs, to writing cohesive entries that kept all group members in mind when deciding what to see next, where to eat, and how they felt during their journey. A sense of community would be impossible without collaboration, listed on the 21st Century World Language Skills map, and an important factor in the success of any digital writing project. By using collaborative online tools like Google Docs, students can brainstorm ideas, work together to design a coherent narrative, and receive immediate feedback on their writing, thus remaining motivated by the text and the subject matter: “When collaborating

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on making a story, the narrative is tested by members of the group, evaluated, and revised to represent a consensually validated account and interpretation of the event or situation. The process requires collaboration, negotiation, and accommodation” (Boase 2013, 8). SPAN102 students wrote two drafts of each diary entry for their project. It is vital that students understand that writing is a process. Second language acquisition is not immediate. Classmates edited each other’s first drafts in class, and the instructor provided feedback on the second draft before the final submission. Peer editing at the Intermediate level may be challenging to navigate. Some students may feel incompetent at sharing substantial feedback with their peers. In-class activities that guide students through the editing process are valuable, as they can be applied throughout their academic careers. Moreover, peer editing is fundamental because it requires students to be vulnerable with each other. Sharing one’s work with peers involves some degree of risk-taking that helps to create a strong sense of community. Besides offering feedback on grammar and vocabulary, students were expected to read and comment on content, asking questions to learn about a specific topic and finding similarities and differences between their classmates’ and their travel experience. Collaborative projects can enhance knowledge acquisition but also lead to critical awareness. The Communities Standards can also be addressed through travel and study abroad, which allows students to continue developing their language skills and deepen their cultural understanding. I would be remiss not to mention how bookmapping projects impacted students’ academic and personal lives. Several SPAN102 students who responded to a survey at the end of the semester hoped to travel to the countries where their bookmapping storytelling project took place. One student in 2018 traveled to Colombia over spring break and attributed his decision to his travel diary project and course material. A student who participated in a Camino de Santiago course that included a bookmapping project studied in Logroño, Spain, during his junior year and walked the entire French route of the Camino. It is clear that for many students, bookmapping projects are the first step to real, future travel. Although students responded positively to bookmapping projects in general, specific areas could be improved. In the second part of this section, I will briefly address unexpected challenges that arose during the various bookmapping projects that I designed and were mentioned in post-course surveys. I also provide suggestions on how to tackle these issues for a smoother journey, specifically focusing on the community aspect of the project. Students praised the collaborative process of the diaries. However, for the entries to follow a cohesive narrative, especially if the class is working on one large bookmapping project (one specific trip, like the Camino de Santiago, which will be described in more detail shortly), it is imperative that all participants

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submit their entries on time. Suppose one group member turns in a diary entry after the due date. In that case, the remaining group members cannot read their classmate’s entry on a timely basis, which, as one student noted in the survey, leads to “inconsistencies or missing information between one person’s entry and another’s.” Besides complying strictly with the project’s due dates, students should also read each other’s entries thoroughly to ensure that their narration is as connected as possible. In the survey, one student suggested that in-class work on the entries could improve the project’s overall cohesiveness. Dedicating class time to brainstorming, writing, and editing can foster a strong sense of community among the students. Tension also arose among one group when a student accidentally deleted a portion of another student’s writing, and could not retrieve the text, despite Google Docs’ ability to revert to previous versions. Although this situation created some strain in the group dynamic, it also provided valuable lessons. Students must save their documents in different programs, especially for a larger project such as bookmapping. For each subsequent version, it is recommended that students download the document so that it is saved on their computer, not just on Google Docs. More importantly, though, students learn to work through their aggravation and resolve the issue as a team. Dealing with these problems prepares students for unexpected challenges, either academically or in their personal lives. In the end, helping students overcome these challenges can strengthen the group dynamics and teach them crucial life skills for the future. As an instructor, one challenge that I encountered was ensuring that all research material was in the target language. Although I provided students with helpful links to resources related to travel in Latin America and Spain, students turned to Google first. Rather than share vetted material with students, in the future, I would dedicate class time to teaching students how to research, especially in the target language. For instance, instead of searching for information on Buenos Aires on google.com, refer students to google.ar for more accurate and up-to-date material. Along the same lines, class time is ideal to introduce students to the resources available through the college library. It is probable that students use the library website regularly to find books and articles, but searching keywords in the L2 can make the research process trickier. In the future, I would also create a collaborative space on a Google Doc or the class’s Learning Management System (LMS) for students to submit resources that have been helpful during the project, ensuring that with each bookmapping assignment, the community grows yearly and remains interconnected with each new class.

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ADDITIONAL BOOKMAPPING PROJECTS FOR THE WORLD LANGUAGE CLASSROOM All stories take place somewhere. Rather than having students who have recently returned abroad share their experience with students in an oral presentation, why not have them map out their story with images and recommendations for future applicants? In a similar vein, instead of having students write a traditional research paper in an Advanced literature course, why not focus on the value of setting in a short story or novel? Providing students with alternative assessments supports differentiation: faculty acknowledge a range of differences in the classroom. Students in turn can show what they know or have learned in multiple ways and feel supported through each step of the process. These steps are crucial for creating an equitable and inclusive classroom. In a literature course, world language majors can trace a character’s movements and research different locations in the text, making connections between the two. In literature classes that implement bookmapping, students can plot different locations in a text, so “students can analyze the setting and then connect the actions, behaviors, and culture of characters to the places where their story unfolds” (Burg and Cavanaugh 2011, 7). Founded in 2006 by Burg, Google Lit Trips is a “flagship project of GLT Global ED, an education nonprofit not affiliated or sponsored by Google” (Google Lit Trips). To create a Google Lit trip, an immersive 3D field trip based on a literary text, instructors or students primarily use Google Earth. These trips or bookmapping projects are stored in a database on the Google Lit Trip website for students and instructors to look through. By adding these trips to the database for the rest of the world to see, they can be recycled by other instructors and students, making this material useful and accessible. Although numerous Google Lit Trip options exist, to my knowledge, none are specific to world language. What follows, therefore, is a sample bookmapping project for an Advanced Spanish course and more examples of literary works in Spanish in which setting drives the plot. In an Advanced literature course, the setting of a novel can become a protagonist in and of itself. For instance, Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s La sombra del viento (2001) takes place in Barcelona, Spain, in 1945, post–World War II, during Francisco Franco’s regime. In Zafón’s novel, Daniel Sempere, the son of a bookstore owner, discovers a novel by Julian Crax entitled La sombra del viento and wants to find other novels by the same author. Unable to find more information on the author or the novel, Daniel sets off on a search that leads him all around Barcelona, where he meets different people. A bookmapping assignment could have students mark all the places Daniel passes through during his quest, using Street View, online images, and videos to make observations

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on the various sites. The novel begins on the calle Arc del Teatre, specifically in front of the Cementerio de los Libros Olvidados, a historic bookstore better known as librería Cervantes Canuda, which existed in Barcelona until 2013. A Google Map search reveals the street’s location: Although short and narrow, comparable to an alleyway, the street is located (and connects) to one of the most popular spots in Barcelona, las Ramblas. Using Google’s Street View function, students can also see why the street is called Arc del Teatre (Arco del Teatro). The entrance to the street has an arch that forms part of the Teatre Principal. The novel slowly continues to bring the reader around familiar sites and landmarks in the Gothic neighborhood of Barcelona: the calle (“street”) Santa Ana, la Plaza Real, la fuente (“fountain”) de las Tres Gracias, and finally, the famous streetlights designed by Antonio Gaudí. Google Street View provides students with a clear depiction of streets and cultural attractions. Although online material will never replace the experience of seeing these sites in person, nonetheless it is an effective tool to transport students to a new place and culture. When students read a novel that takes place in a location they are unfamiliar with, it is necessary for them to imagine it. Having students search for these sites on Google Maps helps them visualize the location and content. It also helps them to think critically: “Using maps enriches students’ spatial thinking skills, their ability to understand spatial relationships, their knowledge of how geographic space is represented, and their ability to reason and make key decisions about spatial concepts” (Burg and Cavanaugh 2011, 9). Students become active learners as they identify the different locations and trace the characters’ movements (Burg and Cavanaugh 2011, 7). If they are interested in exploring a location further, they can use Google Street View and the Internet to discover a street’s history, see what the street looks like today and compare/contrast, research cultural sites, and observe the physical geography. Other texts in Spanish focusing on location that can be incorporated in Spanish language and literature courses and can act as material for bookmapping projects include: • • • • •

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote (novel) Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad (novel) Juan Luis Rulfo, “No oyes ladrar los perros” (short story) Miguel Delibes, “Patio de vecindad” (short story) Juan Carlos Onetti, “Avenida de Mayo-Diagonal-Avenida de Mayo” (short story) • Osuman Umar, Viaje al país de los blancos (memoir) • Sergio Galarza, Paseador de perros (novel)

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Besides books and short stories, students can trace characters’ movements in films that highlight several places, like Diarios de motocicleta or La jaula de oro (2013). Students could compare how the setting is represented in the film to how it looks in the present day. Such comparisons can produce interesting observations on what is depicted in the film and what the director is actively omitting. In addition to tracing a character’s steps, bookmapping projects aimed at Advanced learners can fuse research with culture. These assignments give students a well-rounded, interdisciplinary experience where history, sociology, music, art, literature, and other disciplines unite. Acting as an interactive database, digital maps become living links between students and the target place in question and, hopefully, potential tools for future real-life discoveries. Projects that combine research and geography can also focus on a pre-existing journey, like the Camino de Santiago, or The Way of St. James, a medieval pilgrimage that has transformed into a cultural phenomenon in the last decade thanks to popular films like Martin Sheen and Emilio Estévez’s The Way (2011) (Granda, 2019). The Camino’s international population of pilgrims, various routes in Spain and other European countries, and secular and religious nature lends well to a serious study of pilgrimage through an interdisciplinary lens. As part of a final project, in small groups, students can virtually “walk” one of the many routes in Spain to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the pilgrimage’s final destination. They can record what they observe, hear, smell, and taste in diary entries on Google Docs. Besides writing a daily account of their day, from the perspective of a pilgrim, students can research the historical significance of buildings and monuments, study numerous art periods and architectural styles, investigate different terrains and weather patterns, read reviews of albergues and restaurants, and discover the rich cultural traditions that make up Spain (Granda 2019, 532). By researching not only the physical space but also the differences in terrain and climate of the multiple regions in Spain, students gain a better understanding of the country’s cultural and physical landscape and their own identity: Landscape, then, is not just a neutral backdrop but a multidimensional concept related to the understanding of space and movement and the creation of stories meaningful to the pilgrim. As the pilgrim journeys over the vaguely conceptualized Camino the steps and encounters are like the stamps in the credential: at first there is a blank, structural frame, which is then filled slowly, day by day. A pause, a thought, a stemp, a cup of coffee becomes a part of the memory, and the vaguely conceived-of-whole—the Camino—takes on a new set of meanings. (Frey 1998, 75)

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This type of activity often leads students to compare and contrast their country of origin’s cultural practices to those of Spain. By the end of the semester, students will have a collaborative diary of their journey, documenting the highs and lows. Instructors can print copies of these diary entries and distribute them to students or organize a bookbinding workshop in which students bind and decorate their diaries, ending the semester with a physical souvenir of their virtual journey. Not only do web-based tools like Google Docs allow students to re-create the trip, but for bookmapping projects focused on a specific topic or event, like the Camino de Santiago, they also help to promote some of the values traditionally attached to pilgrimage, like the importance of community. Students from different backgrounds experienced a social, emotional, and physical connection when they virtually walked the Camino and wrote about the experience together. The same rings true for SPAN102 students going on a virtual adventure overseas. In the Camino diaries, students shared extra food with each other or rushed to help another who was injured (Granda 2019, 539). On more than one occasion in the diary entries, SPAN102 students reached out to “assist” their classmates. They lent each other money, brought coffee to their roommate after a late night of dancing and drinking, and yelled loudly to stop the pick-pocketer from stealing their classmate’s belongings. Students’ high levels of engagement are evident in these examples—so much so that they seemed to be fully immersed in the experience. As Oliver Grau explains, “immersion is mentally absorbing and a process, a change, a passage from one mental state to another . . . characterized by diminishing critical distance to what is shown and increasing emotional involvement” (2003, 13). This particular approach to learning about new places and cultures enables students to participate in the collective construction of community and shared experience at the heart of language learning. Advanced students can also incorporate material from their own lives to share their story or that of their family’s. Heritage language learners, for example, can write stories documenting their journeys or that of their ancestors to the United States, transforming a traditional research paper based on a family’s migration story or experiences into a historical, interactive map narrative supported by text, images, and, possibly, video (see Appendix B for detailed assignment instructions). Each “stop” on the virtual map touches on a different stage in a family member’s life. In this sense, the project becomes a dynamic, interactive family tree. In a Community-Based classroom, students can interview native and heritage speakers and showcase their stories to share with a larger community. These stories can be converted into visual digital projects. For instance, a QR code can be created to represent these digital maps and shared or hung on posters around the campus or in the closest town or city. Novice and Intermediate-low students can create fake or real social

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media profile pages, using a template on Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides, for those people that they interviewed, and include basic information on the different places where the interviewee has lived. These posts can later be shared via a department’s social media pages or website. For students with a lower proficiency level, instructors may consider using class material as a foundation for developing digital mapping projects. At the Novice and Intermediate-low levels, it is common for students to be introduced to noteworthy figures who speak the language they are studying, like Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina (Puerto Rican) associate justice of the Supreme Court. As many of these figures have moved several times across the country and traveled the world, a mapping project helps students visualize the person’s trajectory, documenting the significant spaces that marked his or her career. Sonia Sotomayor, for example, was born in the Bronx, New York, and completed her undergraduate studies at Princeton University in New Jersey. Before completing her Juris Doctor at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, she married in New York City. Given students’ varying language proficiencies, the biographical material of these figures should be vetted, keeping the task’s objective in mind. A short, yet informative text on Sonia Sotomayor’s life would be ideal for Novice and Intermediate students (Baumann, 2019). Because much of the information offers a timeline of the person’s life in narrative, the preterite tense is employed, making this type of activity ideal for those in the second or third semester of the language sequence. This same material could be used in a first-semester course, but students would primarily be inferring, a fundamental skill for language learners, particularly in the beginner phase. Photos of the figures, their family, or significant places pinned on the map offer students and perhaps a larger public a clearer image of these famous Spanish-speaking people. Besides showcasing well-known figures in the curriculum, at the Novice high and Intermediate-low levels, it is common for world language textbooks to include information on popular holidays and traditions in the countries where the L2 is spoken. In a Spanish textbook, students may learn about Holy Week in Spain, Day of the Dead in Mexico, and other Spanish-speaking countries, and about drinking mate in Uruguay and Argentina. Instead of having students read and regurgitate this information in an oral presentation or research paper, instructors can design a collaborative activity in which students are assigned different countries and must find information on a particular holiday or tradition, depending on the objective. Students, for example, could research the origin of different historical events, focusing on independence days in Spanish-speaking countries, and record their findings on the digital map. They can also showcase different Hispanic artists or trace art movements on a virtual interactive map. Students can also search for popular dishes served during holidays and celebrations, and include a

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brief description of the food or drink, and record the recipe in an entry on the digital map. Once students have written their entries, their classmates can read and comment on each other’s entries, finding similarities and differences between their dishes and that of their peers. At the end of the unit, students will have an interactive map of recipes from numerous Spanish-speaking countries, a visual representation of the gastronomical richness. In addition to these original projects geared toward world language study, I would also like to mention several activities referenced by Cavanaugh and Burg in their book, as they can be easily adapted for beginner or upper-level language courses, like literature. Mapping websites and software allow users to visit sites and view them from a unique perspective, in three-dimension. For instance, students who study William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at one point could open Google Earth to view Rome as it was in 320 AD (Cavanaugh and Burg 2011, 17). This map, only available now as a short YouTube video, was part of a larger project, Rome Reborn 2.1, at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (Frischer, YouTube). Although the project dates back to 2000, the images provide intricate details of the interior of buildings—colors, columns, and other details—that situate the readers in the time of the play. Present-day world language courses that fuse history with literature, like novels on the Spanish Civil War, could benefit from these digital humanities projects through virtual reality or map-making software. Indeed, a collaborative class project could involve students creating their own visual representation of a physical space studied or mentioned in the texts they read during the semester, as was done by Christopher Oecher, a professor in the Spanish department at Gettysburg College. With his Golden Age theater course and the support of Digital Technology Summer Fellows, Professor Oecher created a virtual reality representation of Madrid’s El Corral de Príncipe, one of the most relevant stages in seventeenth-century Spain. Because it is impossible to see a reenactment of a seventeenth-century theatrical performance in real-time, it is difficult for students to imagine it; thus, Professor Oecher’s idea to re-create it through a modern medium appeals to twenty-first-century students. Although designing the virtual theater space was challenging, the final product fully engaged students: The model gives students a sense of space and encourages them to match the play that we are reading with real-life performance possibilities. This in turn allows me to get creative with the projects that I assign students. Instead of writing the typical term paper on a specific scene or theme in the play, students will be able to act as the director, or autor/a de comedias [when translated to Spanish], and stage a specific scene, while justifying their understanding of the

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text, its contexts, and their analytical choices in terms of the play and the theater space. (Doscher 2019)

Projects of this nature not only bring an obsolete space to life but also give students a voice. A student-driven project empowers students to take on the important role of collaborators and creators in and outside the classroom. ASSESSMENT AND CHALLENGES TO BOOKMAPPING Instructors during the COVID-19 pandemic have become more comfortable with digital tools and have integrated technology into their classes daily, but the tendency, especially in the more Advanced courses, like literature, is still to assign students a traditional research paper at the end of the semester. This is unfortunate for several reasons. First, assessments should reflect what is going on in the classroom. If instructors assign tasks on their university’s LMS, like an online discussion board, have students submit their work via Google Docs, complete their homework on an online textbook, or design an activity that has students researching information online, assessments should incorporate technology, or offer at least one option that includes technology during the semester. Second, students, for the most part, are comfortable with using digital tools. If they are not, technical support from the instructor or other departments on campus can allow them to develop their information and technology literacy, two skills listed in the 21st Century World Language Skill map. These skills encourage students to apply digital tools appropriately as a research and communicative tool to efficiently and effectively gather, evaluate, and share information. Some instructors may be hesitant to add further workshops to their already crammed course calendars, but these informational sessions are useful for students in the long run and thus worth adding to the schedule. Regardless of their familiarity with a digital tool, it is probable that students may not have used this specific technology in a nontraditional academic way. Students may regularly use Google Maps on their smartphones but have never considered using the app to add text, images, and other information, as well as sharing these maps with others. A workshop, therefore, on how to use these features in an academic setting may be helpful. Many institutions, like small liberal arts colleges, encourage “creativity and exploration” (Bender 2021, 560). Creativity and innovation are two 21st Century World Language Skills that support originality and promote openness, that is, the ability to communicate ideas freely and be responsive to new ones. A traditional research paper does the opposite; it stifles students’ creativity and language. As Mirzam C. Pérez, an instructor who integrated digital humanities tools into her course on Early Modern Spanish Cities, points out,

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when students write traditional research papers, they “become mechanized in their approach to the field” (2018, 101). This often results in papers that follow a five-paragraph format or another equally limiting assignment that could inhibit students’ progress in the target language. Because students are so fixated on using a more formal, academic language, they often take fewer risks, resorting to first writing their paper in the L1 and then translating it into the L2. An opportunity to build their vocabulary, try new verb tenses, engage more deeply in research, and think outside the box is lost. Although bookmapping emphasizes creativity, one of the biggest challenges in implementing an original bookmapping storytelling project that combines fiction and geography is finding a balance between the two. The more creative students often focus on the story’s fictional elements rather than the research, the facts to support their plot and ground the story in a real place and time. For other students, creative writing is difficult simply because it is not a skill that is practiced regularly once in college. Instructors can resolve this issue by providing students with a sample copy of a diary entry that correctly integrates fiction and facts. If there is sufficient time in the course calendar, Intermediate-high and Advanced students may benefit from a hands-on writing workshop in which the instructor shows students how to research, especially to determine which websites are legitimate and which are not. Instructors may want to incorporate more creative writing tasks in their courses as well so students feel comfortable with this style. Once students have understood how to balance the two, they feel empowered to take risks in the target language and write engaging stories using digital maps and other tools. Digital stories not only help students develop linguistic and cultural proficiency with multimedia applications but also guide students to think critically and creatively about how visual elements, specifically images, meaningfully support their stories. Burg and Cavanaugh explain that images “enhance comprehension of the setting, character, plot, and/or themes or images that will extend understanding of the historical, geographical, social, political, or other relevant subjects” (2011, 96). Bookmapping projects combine writing with photography but place geography at the crux of the two art forms. Using a digital map, students document a trip they have already taken or wish to take and upload photos to highlight the numerous “stops” on their journey. In these projects, physical location drives the content, not vice versa. That is, the writing and images complement and support the setting. With many of these mapping programs and digital tools, users can upload photos to either a main slide at the beginning of the trip or to the map pins themselves. For several travel diary entries, SPAN102 students included a selfie with a backdrop from the city they explored, a small yet revealing detail of the high level

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of engagement that this project created for them, and the community-driven aspect of the assignment. Images add a deeper meaning to the text and map, but it is important that students be aware of copyrighted material and accessibility. These two issues can be addressed by the instructor and/or the institution’s technology department, further developing students’ technology and information literacy. The images that students post must be referenced at the end of the project or in a separate document with the correct URLs for the websites where the images were found and the retrieval date. Depending on the project’s objectives, instructors may consider giving creative, more artistically inclined students the option of drawing or creating their own figures, including original background music, or other mediums, which can add a more personal and possibly community-driven experience to the project. Using these tools, students build on their understanding of the skills that comprise success in a digital age: information, media, and technology literacy, collaboration, creativity, and innovation. The rubric for students’ bookmapping projects/presentational communication activity can measure various skills/areas depending on students’ proficiency and the assignment objective. Cavanaugh and Burg share assessment strategies and a rubric that can serve as a model for instructors implementing bookmapping for the first time (2011, 30–31). Some areas of assessment can include content (quality of research, organization, tone, development of ideas), linguistic accuracy (grammar, spelling, pronunciation), vocabulary, format, creativity (supporting media), organization and images, and originality (plot). Linguistic accuracy can be specified if the assignment has a linguistic objective. For example, at the Intermediate-low and mid-level, Spanish students will write their story using the preterite and imperfect tenses, a significant benchmark for this proficiency level. What is unique about this project, as opposed to a more traditional research paper or exam, is that it reflects what students can truly do with the language instead of regurgitating information for a specific grade. Activities that include relevant, real-world tasks will engage students at a higher level, which as a result, will improve their language skills. DIGITAL MAPPING TOOLS Google Maps is certainly the most well-known online mapping tool, but it is not the only online program or digital tool available to create a story. For all of my bookmapping projects, I used Google Tour Builder, which shut down in July 2022. Cavanaugh and Burg’s Bookmapping: Lit Trips and Beyond include an exhaustive list of additional mapping tools, some of which I

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include below (2011, 122–124). It is important to note that, as with all technology, these tools change frequently, so instructors should plan accordingly: Online Mapping Tools Bing Maps: www​.bing​.com​/maps​/ Center for Applied Research and Environmental Systems: http:​//​circ​.rupri​ .org Exhibit (MIT’s Simile Widgets): http:​//​simile​-widgets​.org​/exhibit​/ National Geographic Society MapMachine: http:​//​maps​.nationalgeographic​ .com​/map​-machine Planiglobe: www​.planiglobe​.com Quikmaps: http:​//​quikmaps​.com GIS Software Program Used in PK–12 Education ArcExplorer: www​.esri​.com​/arcexplorer​/ Google Earth: http:​//​earth​.google​.com GRASS (Mac): http:​//​openosx​.com​/grass​/ Idrisi (free trial): www​.clarklabs​.org Mapitude: www​.caliper​.com Mfworks: www​.mpassociates​.gr​/software​/environment​/mfworks​.html Since the publication of Burg and Cavanaugh’s book in 2011, which primarily concerns Google Earth and Google Maps, other popular mapping and storytelling tools and programs have been released, like (Google) My Maps and StoryMap JS, which uses Knight Lab tools for digital storytelling. With all of these programs, users can create a customized map. With My Maps, users can create a pin or pinmark, which indicates a “stop” on the map and add shapes, photos, and videos. A convenient feature of this tool is the option to export the map. Another helpful feature of My Maps (and most Google tools) is the ability to collaborate, making it an ideal feature for course activities. Although it does not include a feature that permits text to be added to the pins, major landmarks, public transportation, restaurants, and so on can be marked, which for the lower language levels whose proficiency is limited, could be an interesting option. StoryMap JS is a free online tool that allows users to share stories highlighting their location, most likely a series of events or multiple entries related to a singular theme. Since this tool is intuitive and user-friendly and allows for adding text, it is ideal for assignments that fuse digital mapping and storytelling. Below are instructions to guide first-time instructors with the task of creating a map, adding text and images, and collaborating with other students:

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1.  If students are traveling in pairs or small groups, each group should create a gmail account. Log-in information should be shared with all group members. If the StoryMap is a trip that involves the entire class, instructors should create an email account and share the log-in information with students. 2.  Create a StoryMap by clicking New StoryMap. Give the StoryMap a creative name that situates the readers. 3.  Students click on the + Add Slide tab on the left side of the screen. This will open a new page where students will copy one of their diary entries. 4.  Once on the diary entry page students will: a.  Search location. Some smaller cities and towns may be challenging to find, so students may need to try a few times with different landmarks, if the map function doesn’t recognize the town. b.  Under headline, students write the name of the town or city and the day (i.e., Day 1: Lima, Perú). c.  In the textbox under headline, students copy and paste their edited diary entries from Google Docs. All entries can include a greeting (Dear diary; Hello) and an ending (Goodbye; See you soon), followed by the students’ names. d.  Students search for a photo on the Internet that best fits with their diary entry (a landmark, food, etc.). Save the image to the desktop. Click upload an image on the left side to add a photo. e.  Once students have completed these steps, they click PREVIEW at the top to double check their work: Is the location in the correct area? Is the headline clear? Does the image depict what they wrote about? Is the diary entry formatted correctly according to the project instructions? 5.  To add another diary entry page, click + Add Slide, and repeat the above steps. 6.  Once students have added both diary entries, including photos, click Save on the upper left side and close out of the program. To enhance students’ observations and push them beyond Google Street View and YouTube, instructors may encourage them to use additional programs and tools, like virtual reality (VR). VR and virtual tours can add an immersive and personal element to bookmapping projects by giving students a traveler’s view of their destination(s). Students can use virtual headsets or experience a virtual tour on their tablet or smartphone and see more vividly what the space would look like in person. Through this immersive and often interactive virtual experience, students become more aware of the landscape and their surroundings, learn more about the country’s history, observe the people they see, and read interesting cultural tidbits. These tools may be

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particularly appealing for Novice and Intermediate-low students whose proficiency levels may make it challenging to do significant research in the target language. Students at these levels can participate in this project by relying on their senses to make observations and complete the assignment. “Drive & Listen” is another tool that can enhance and personalize students’ diary entries. The app allows users to take a virtual drive through numerous cities worldwide while listening to real-time local radio and/or street sounds. The view is at driver’s-eye level, so it truly provides an immersive experience. Users do not have to click or do anything to make the car move, so as it moves forward, the road disappears, and the user takes on the role of driver or passenger, witnessing what is happening around them. In an academic context, instructors can prod their students to first listen to the sounds they hear: a revving motorcycle, construction work, an ambulance rushing by, and a bus dropping off passengers. As people walk on the sidewalks and crosswalks, users can make observations. Are clothing styles similar or different to those in the United States? In larger cities, what stores and restaurants do they see? Are they bigger or smaller than those in major cities in the United States? How is the weather similar or different? How do the radio station channels reflect the culture? “Drive & Listen” can allow students to make cultural observations and connections, deepening their understanding of their own culture and thus increasing their intercultural competence. Furthermore, for students who have never traveled outside of the United States or for those who are preparing to study abroad, “Drive & Learn” and VR can give them a good idea of what to expect in terms of transportation options and what city life looks like. CONCLUSION The COVID-19 pandemic radically transformed teaching across all subjects and levels. Overnight, college instructors shifted to online teaching, relying on Zoom and other video-conferencing platforms to teach their students. This abrupt change pushed instructors to think outside the box, especially regarding student assessment. How could instructors implement exams, for example, without sufficient proctoring? Would students rely on Google Translate or their notes during the exam? Students’ deteriorating mental health and general confusion surrounding the pandemic exacerbated the need for instructors to press a “reset” button and rethink their teaching methodologies, course objectives, and assessments. Because technology was a reliable medium, many instructors incorporated digital learning into their content. As a result, digital humanities work in world language departments flourished. What additional nontraditional assessments could be designed with digital

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tools to increase student engagement when attention and motivation were at an all-time low and create an equitable and inclusive classroom? When combined with virtual maps, digital stories take on a deeper meaning as a connection between narration and cartography is established. As a result, in bookmapped storytelling projects, students not only become storytellers but also mapmakers, taking control of the direction of both their narration and their space. In this regard, “[t]he storytelling process [becomes] a journey” (Lambert 2009, 47). Digital maps in the language and culture classroom certainly will not replace the experience of living abroad, namely the physical, emotional, and mental highs and lows that characterize such trips. After all, there is nothing quite like the rush of ordering food at a restaurant, traveling on a bus for the first time, or asking for directions in the target language. Nevertheless, digital maps offer students an immersive experience that empowers and prepares them for the real deal, the trip that will take place after the pandemic, after college, or years later. If a physical trip is not possible, designing bookmapping projects allows students to temporarily escape from the classroom as they immerse themselves in a new world—one that “connects the fictional, textual world to the digitized representation of that space” (Philips 2021, 650). They can use their senses to make observations and connections that will help them understand the target language and culture better and prepare them for future travel. When paired with a clear learning objective in culture courses, combining digital maps and storytelling is an innovative way to engage with the material. Maps stimulate critical thinking skills, pique students’ interest in the language and culture, and lead to a deeper understanding of the culture that may be useful during future travel abroad. NOTES 1. Students enrolled in the Middlebury College Schools Abroad sign a language pledge. They commit to use the target language for the duration of the program—in and outside of the classroom. 2. All translations done by the author.

Chapter Two

Teaching Language and Culture through Social Media

In Spanish II, I learned that social media can be used for practical purposes, just not to share photos with friends and family. To this day, I still follow accounts from our class—both my classmates’ and other content, like Lionel Messi and Mafalda Digital. Because of our class’s use of Instagram, when I went abroad, I knew that looking up certain places like restaurants and museums could give me a better idea of what to expect. As someone who has a lot of anxiety, this information was really helpful. I once looked up a restaurant on Instagram to see how fancy it was inside and what people were wearing. I didn’t want to be overdressed! —B.S., student who took three semesters of Spanish at Amherst College and spent a semester in Granada, Spain

SOCIAL MEDIA AND STUDY ABROAD Communication, culture, and community are the driving forces of language acquisition, especially during studying abroad. When students spend a semester or year overseas, language and culture are everywhere: in the subway, at the crosswalk, and in restaurants. It is inevitable that students hear the target language daily when their days consist of juggling classes and homework with visits to cultural landmarks, and spending time with host family and friends. More adventurous students may participate in extracurricular activities, forming friendships with other young adults and, thus, expanding their community. As readers will learn in Chapter 3, some students seek out short- and long-term relationships by downloading dating apps like Tinder while abroad. With one click, students can add phone numbers to contact lists and exchange social media handles. Soon, both parties are “liking” each 75

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other’s social media posts, meeting up on dates, and tagging each other in photos and videos. The unique yet intense nature of study abroad often creates a strong community among students—in part due to a shared experience projected virtually across various social media platforms. Many of today’s college students are accustomed to showcasing their life on social media. Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are digital platforms that allow users to share their emotions, thoughts, and experiences with others, either publicly or privately. Since it is second nature for many Gen Zers to post photos and videos of themselves online all day, it is no surprise that their study abroad experience becomes the focal point of their social media content. Some Study Abroad offices even have students “take over” their social media accounts for a day. Students showcase their life overseas for current students, alumni, faculty, parents, and prospective students through videos and photos and answer personal questions about living abroad. Communication, culture, and community are not only key to acquiring a language, but they drive social media content for students abroad. For many, culture is what motivates their language learning and is a huge impetus behind their decision to study abroad. After several years studying the target language and seeing pictures of cultural landmarks in textbooks, students want to see them with their own eyes and showcase their visit with photos and videos. As students settle into a routine abroad, daily life makes up most of their social media material. They may document their favorite breakfast dish, their daily commute, or their cardio class in a local gym. It is likely that their breakfast options are different from those offered in the campus dining hall at their home institution. Their commute involves a subway or bus rather than a simple walk to a building next to their dormitory. The cardio class may consist of new moves and music—all in the target language. Once students have selected their favorite go-to spots, like cafés and bookstores, they may “follow” them on social media. By “following” their favorite places, they receive up-to-date information, like announcements, on their phone. “Following” certain businesses on social media may also open up doors, including friendships with other followers. Students can “follow” classmates tagged in a photo taken after the cardio class. Suddenly, they are in contact with native speakers and other internationals—all of whom have a shared interest (in this case, working out) and speak and/or understand the target language at varying levels. Exploring new places while abroad is crucial and students long to find a favorite spot, like a gym or café, somewhere where they feel comfortable and welcomed. However, some students may not know where to start. Google searches for locations typically list the most popular tourist sites. To find places, events, and landmarks off the beaten path or known only by natives,

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study abroad students have to rely on their host family, professors, friends, or social media for help. On Instagram, students have five search options: recent posts (top), accounts, audio, tags (hashtags), and places (geotag). A student studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who searches for the capital by its geotag on Instagram, may find the following under most recent posts: an announcement for an organic food market, a picture of a woman sitting next to a Mafalda statue, and a short video tour of the Japanese garden in the city. The material in these posts go beyond the textbook content. For instance, although Mafalda is an iconic figure in Latin America, she is not as well-known in the United States and may not be mentioned in Spanish class, depending on the instructor’s background and experience. This photo may spark students’ curiosity to look up the exact location of the statue in Buenos Aires and why this cartoon is so important. Students can then compare Mafalda to other popular comics in the United States, like Calvin and Hobbes. Besides location, Instagram searches for cultural products, like clothing, can be revealing and valuable material. The top posts for #modaargentina in Fall 2022 include numerous pictures of strappy high-heeled sandals in different colors, several bright green articles of clothing, and square-shaped designer sunglasses. This information is helpful if students want to adapt their style while abroad. They can keep these trends in mind when packing their suitcase or going on their first shopping trip abroad. Along these same lines, students can check out posts by popular clothing brands and stores for young adults or observe photos of people eating, going out, or in class, and compare and contrast clothing styles in the United States to those where the target language is spoken: What do young adults wear to class? How do people dress to go out at night? How does this reflect the target language’s culture? How does it differ from students’ own culture? These photos are eye-opening, relevant, and authentic material. Like fashion trends changing every season, Instagram updates daily, making posts effective and engaging material for students to view outside of class: “Most curricular resources, especially printed ones, cannot do the same because they are bound to specific moments in time” (Wagner 2021, 158). Since social media content is ever-changing, it is not included in textbooks. By incorporating Instagram into the classroom, the curriculum expands exponentially. Students are exposed to endless content that is interesting and pertinent to their lives but also offers them an opportunity to understand the target culture from afar by observing what life looks like abroad from real creators. On a practical level, uploading photos on a social media platform, like Instagram or Facebook, is an easy and effective way for study abroad students to share what they have been up to with family and friends at home. Gone are the days when students would write a lengthy email or letter or make an expensive long-distance phone call once a week to check in. Underneath

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their social media photos, students can include a written explanation in the caption field. Hashtags and a geotag can also be inserted. With these three features, it is clear where the student is, what they are doing, and what interests or emotions are attached to the activity. Years later, these social media albums become digital mementos of their travels. Printed photo albums are a thing of the past. Photos on social media allow students to re-experience their study abroad memories in an organized and convenient way. Additionally, unlike with physical photo albums, photos on social media can be accessed anywhere so they do not have to carry the album to revisit their time abroad. Photos can also help family and friends at home feel connected, to feel part of a community. Photos give the illusion of closeness, despite thousands of miles of separation. Parents no longer have to imagine what their son or daughter’s host family looks like, where the school is located, and what they eat every day. Uploading photos regularly on social media can create a sense of community. It makes followers feel like they are there, alongside the user, sharing in the memory taking place. The “live video” function, available on many social media platforms, allows followers to experience the memory in real-time, leaving comments and participating in the video if added by the user. “Stories,” which consist of a short video or photo, can also be added to social media accounts. Because these stories disappear in twenty-four hours, users often check their followers’ accounts during the day, some more than ten times (Patel, 2017). Part of Gen Z’s obsession with regularly checking followers’ accounts stems from FOMO, the fear of missing out. FOMO is not a new phenomenon, but with the increased popularity of social media, it has become more prominent. Students may often display picture-perfect photos of their travels, new friends, and experiences with the intention of staying in touch, but after seeing these photos, their followers may compare their lives to those of their peers and feel like they are missing out. This may eventually create a rift between friends. Sharing photos online, therefore, can be a double-edged sword. Although sharing so much online may trigger FOMO among students abroad and followers at home, staying connected through photos and videos may strengthen some relationships as well. For students abroad, maintaining relationships with people at home is essential to their overall well-being (Godwin-Jones, 2016), so they themselves feel like they are not missing out on anything. As a result, they are less inclined to be homesick (Mitchell, 2012) and have less anxiety (Hetz et al., 2015). Social media also helps students studying abroad make connections with new friends, especially those participating in the same study abroad program. These students connect over their shared cultural identity, becoming a source of comfort during stressful times as they learn to navigate their new surroundings together. Additionally, it is often difficult for L2 students to befriend native speakers while abroad

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for many reasons, one being the language barrier. Nonetheless, when students meet native speakers, adding them as friends on social media is considered easy: it is second nature for Gen Z to initiate a digital connection and it requires a basic level of proficiency. Despite the many benefits of social media, increased usage may produce a range of emotions, like anxiety, depression, and loneliness, and negative experiences, like feeling inadequate or body image issues—especially among today’s college students. In addition to these alarming and harmful side effects, security issues keep instructors and school administrators from incorporating social media in the classroom. Although these are valid concerns, the reality is that social media is widespread. Generation Z and millions of other people of all ages communicate via social networks every day. They network through LinkedIn, post meeting announcements on Facebook, share travel photos on Instagram, socialize through Snapchat and make videos on TikTok. Given the popularity of social networking platforms, school administrators and faculty need to meet students halfway and acknowledge that social networking sites are the primary source of communication among college students. Since the mode through which material is taught or practiced should reflect current trends, why not, then, design activities and assessments that re-create this type of communication? The COVID-19 pandemic allowed instructors and school administrators to think creatively about technology in the classroom. Instead of focusing on the possible negative repercussions associated with excessive technology, instructors can teach students about digital literacy. These skills help students to find, analyze, create, and communicate information, including via social media networks. When viewed through a pedagogical lens, social media usage in the home institution has the potential to promote target language acquisition outside of the classroom, increase students’ exposure to culture, and create community—much in the same way as a student who studies abroad uses social media on a daily basis to practice the target language, discover a new culture, and connect with others. Chapter 2 focuses on social media, primarily Instagram, as a means to immerse L2 students in the target language and culture as an alternative to the traditional (physical) study abroad model. In addition to fulfilling the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Communication and Cultures standards, the chapter demonstrates how the Communities standard can be reimagined through the incorporation of social media in both language and literature courses. The remaining 2 Cs— Connections and Comparisons—are also showcased. All demonstrations are supported by material from several Spanish course Instagram posts and excerpts from a post-course survey. The chapter explores some of the challenges associated with incorporating social media in the classroom setting

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and concludes with examples of how to implement Instagram in lower-level language classes. Whereas Chapter 1 hones in on the presentational mode and Chapter 3 on the interpersonal mode of communication, Chapter 2 will emphasize the interpretive mode, though the other two are present. In addition to ACTFL’s 5 Cs, several skills from the 21st Century World Language Skills Map are discussed, including collaboration, information, media, and technology literacy, and creativity. REDEFINING LITERACIES THROUGH INSTAGRAM In the last thirty years, technology has undergone a considerable transformation. In the 1990s, the Internet and digital programs were primarily search tools, a way to locate information. Today’s technology, in contrast, is largely focused on communication and production but mainly through collaboration. This is most evident in popular media sharing sites (YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, Flip); blogs; videoconferencing (Zoom, Skype, Google Meet); digital mapping (Google Maps); content aggregation and curation (Pinterest, Storify), and of course, social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn) (Paesani et al. 2016, 236). Although many social media networks exist, those that rely primarily on visuals are the most popular among today’s young adults in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center (2021), 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States prefer Instagram (76%), Snapchat (75%), or TikTok (55%). Given these statistics, it is clear that today’s college students are image driven.1 The photos and videos that they upload communicate a message that may garner “likes” and followers and build a virtual community. Communication and community are the two primary objectives of social media networking sites like Instagram and Facebook. Information is exchanged between users, knowledge is transmitted, and meaning is made and transformed through the interpretation of written texts and visuals, like videos and photographs. These multimodal texts (those that bring together two or more modes, like audio and visual) trigger active user engagement and, consequently, the creation of a network and community that disseminates information using a multiliteracies approach. A term first coined by the New London Group (1994), multiliteracies, expands on the traditional definition of literacy: the Multiliteracies notion sets out to address the variability of meaning making in different cultural, social or domain-specific contexts. [. . .] The other ‘multi-’ response to the question of the ‘what’ of Multiliteracies arises in part from the characteristics of the new information and communications media. Meaning is made in ways that are increasingly multimodal—in which written-linguistic

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modes of meaning interface with oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile, and spatial patterns of meaning. (Cope and Kalantzis 2015, 3)

Under a multiliteracies approach in an academic setting, the traditional literacy curriculum focused on grammar and the literary canon is transformed into a “more productive, relevant, innovative and creative and even perhaps emancipatory” pedagogy that emphasizes meaning making (Cope and Kalantzis 2015, 165). Today’s students learn differently from those from the past—even those from five or ten years ago. It is vital to meet them halfway through other forms of literacy. The multiliteracies pedagogical approach “envelop[s] the textual within the communicative” (Allen and Paesani 2010, 134). That is, the linguistic mode of communication, which primarily concentrates on oral skills in communicative language teaching, considers other skills, like writing and reading, which have been traditionally overlooked in the world language classroom. Cope and Kalantzis (2015) identify several knowledge processes, two of which are relevant for understanding multiliteracies: experiencing (known and new) and analyzing (functionally and critically). Experiencing “involv[es] learning through immersion in the real, everyday stuff of the world” (Cope and Kalantzis 2015, 17). If students view an Instagram post that is familiar, perhaps of a well-known dish or fashion style, and the text is comprehensible, they are experiencing the known. However, if the post includes an entirely unknown dish with unfamiliar language, the students experience the new. Along with experiencing, students have to analyze functionally and critically. In addition to analyzing the images, tags, and text, students must reflect on the creator’s intentions when creating the post: Is it informational or a form of creative expression? Who is the target audience? What is the objective behind posting this image or video to the public? (Wagner 2021, 155). Reading and interpretation are viewed as “dynamic processes of transformation rather than processes of reproduction” (Cope and Kalantzis 2009, 175). As active participants in the literacy process, students partake in the “social world, and its contemporary forms increasingly multimodal, with linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial modes of meaning becoming increasingly integrated in everyday media and cultural practices” (Cope and Kalantzis 2009, 165). In this regard, texts are defined broadly to include spoken, written, visual and audio material. Similar to the previous chapter that describes several nontraditional assessments in the form of bookmapping projects, faculty who provide students with various “texts,” recognize their classroom’s different learning needs. Offering students one form of “text” is inequitable. The option to choose different “texts” embraces students’ diversity and aims to create an equitable and inclusive space where all voices can be showcased.

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Under this lens, a reevaluation of traditional literacy models is necessary. New approaches to learning through digital media are required to preserve or rekindle interest in reading and writing. This does not mean changing lesson plans or homework assignments completely but reimagining the teaching of this material in ways that redefine rather than replace traditional tasks. For this to occur, faculty and students must first reexamine the definition of literacy and reflect on what it looks like to a twenty-first-century student. How has technology expanded our definition of literacy? Instead of only offering students a printed version of a text, instructors may consider sharing other options like a recording of the text on YouTube by a native speaker or, better yet, by the author. Educators can include other texts in their course syllabi, like graphic novels, websites, and social media platforms—all multimodal due to the combination of text and images (Hughes and Morrison 2014, 609). The more modes that Generation Z is exposed to, the more engaging the material becomes. Since the introduction of the term multiliteracies in the 1990s, new literacies have surfaced thanks to the development of the Internet, and the emergence of social media. The new in new literacies does not refer solely to the latest digital tool; it is also associated with the mindset of the latest technology, which fosters participation, collaboration, collective intelligence, tagging and sharing, distributed expertise, and relationships (Paesani et al., 2016). In other words, it favors the social dimension these tools afford, including those in academic settings. In the last decade or so, social media has transformed from strictly a social network for family, friends, and colleagues to communicate information and share photos into a social pedagogical tool capable of fulfilling clear learning objectives. Social media networking sites like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook form part of what is referred to as Web 2.0, technology that is user generated but enables interactivity from different parts of the world. The power of connection and collaboration behind these sites has some people referring to Web 2.0 as the Social Web (Lomicka and Lord 2009, 4). This new terminology can be applied to language learning spaces which also promote social interaction and collaboration (Lomicka and Lord 2009, 4). Various college departments use social media for its original purpose: to share information and connect with people. For example, Wellesley College’s Spanish and Portuguese department has a Facebook page to publish news, upcoming events on campus, information related to applying to study abroad programs, alumni updates, and photos of students participating in activities on and off campus. In the same vein, propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, Amherst College’s Spanish department created an Instagram account (@ amherstmamuts) in fall 2020 to share virtual events and connect students, alumni, faculty, and the larger Amherst population. Daily “stories” were

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dedicated to specific Instagram content: Monday-vocabulary; Tuesday and Wednesday-cultural tidbits; Thursday-jokes and riddles in the target language; and Friday-music (Granda, 2020). The account continues to thrive as a way to foster community, share student, alumni, and faculty news, and showcase courses in the department. Connecting current students with alumni through social media not only helps students see how their language skills (and others!) can be applied in a professional setting, beyond the classroom, but it also builds community. Specifically, students become aware of how many multilingual communities exist around the world and how studying a language and culture can open many doors (Cutshall Nov. 2012, 37). Integrating social media directly in the classroom at first may not be an obvious choice among faculty and administrators. After all, billions of people use these platforms for non-educational purposes. People meet romantic partners, reconnect with long-lost friends, sell furniture, and organize meetups on social media. Moreover, the majority of social media platforms are visually driven. How could this material be transformed into classroom content? Numerous studies exist on the incorporation of social media platforms in the classroom setting on varying subjects and purposes (Facebook—Bowman & Akcaoglu, 2014; McCarthy, 2010; Twitter—Krüger-Ross, Waters, & Farewell, 2012; Reed, 2013; Warren & Wakefield, 2012; Jerónimo and Martin, 2021). Several studies on social media, specifically Instagram, for the L2 or EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom exist (Fornara, 2018; Berti, 2020; Lestari and German, 2021; Wagner, 2021), but few, if any, discuss social media in world language and upper-level culture courses, including literature.2 Instagram is a popular photo- and video-sharing social networking service created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010 that Facebook, now known as Meta, bought in 2012. Based on the Pew Research Center (2021), 71% of Instagram users in the United States are between 18 and 29 years old. Part of Instagram’s appeal among young adults is that they can access it via a phone or a computer. Once the app is downloaded, Instagram users can take photos or videos or upload photos stored on their phones to a private or public account. They can add a caption below the post and include hashtags, which help connect content to a specific topic, event, theme, or conversation. If the account is public, other users can connect through these hashtags and view the photos. They can also include a geotag, which marks a specific location like a city, restaurant, or store. Geotags that mark points of interest may entice others to visit. A tagged location can also inspire users to see other people who have taken photos there from different angles, lighting, and so on, and re-create these same shots. Since Instagram posts can include photos, videos, emojis, written language, hashtags, musical audio, spoken audio, and geotags, it is considered a multimodal text, thus an effective tool to develop students’

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multiliteracies skills (Wagner 2021, 154) and showcase their diverse perspectives, and experiences, and creativity. As with any activity designed for the classroom, instructors must reflect on the value that a digital tool holds within an educational space. Educators must “move beyond a simple computer functional competence (knowing how to use the tools) toward both a critical competence (realizing what the tools are good for) and then, finally, to a rhetorical competence (understanding how these tools will help transform the learning environment)” (Blake 2008, xv). Instructors must avoid the temptation to incorporate technology in class simply because it forms part of the latest digital trend and critically reflects on how the tool or program will enhance their task. Social media has contributed to meaningful and innovative instruction that goes beyond simply sharing news or creating connections. It has the power to redefine traditional tasks through authentic material, foster community, and increase L2 students’ linguistic and cultural proficiency. Instagram, like other social networking sites, provides users with authentic material, content created in the target language that is not intended for L2 learners. Authentic material can include newspapers, websites, restaurant menus, songs, artwork, photos, films, and commercials. This material should be context and age-appropriate and match the students’ linguistic level. If instructors opt to employ material that is slightly more advanced than their students’ proficiency, which many educators and researchers recommend, scaffolding is necessary. Pre-tasks, for example, are beneficial as they prepare students for the main interpretation task. Since all material on Instagram is considered authentic material, on the one hand, there are billions of opportunities to engage students with culturally rich content. On the other hand, some of this content may be problematic, especially for younger students. In this case, instructors should vet accounts to ensure that students look at appropriate material. Photos and videos are typically the first to be noticed on Instagram, followed by the written text, if any, in the caption. As seen in the examples at the beginning of this chapter, one Instagram search can produce myriad results that offer students a deeper look into the culture and language they are studying—all with just a few clicks on their phone. This type of input for L2 learners is valuable as it can provide information about the target language and culture. Colloquial expressions, culturally specific words, and even popular emojis are rich material for language acquisition. These images and text provide real-life examples of the language in everyday situations and are quite different from those published in textbooks. The more engaged students are while implementing the digital tool, the easier it will be for them to learn the language and build on their skills in and outside the classroom.

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Designing a task with social media encourages students to use the target language outside the classroom in different ways. Students may have to search for photos and videos independently, which requires time and patience. Searching for culturally rich material on social media is more challenging than one would think, especially in the target language. The search criteria on Instagram are fairly limited. Students will find the best results using hashtags and geotags (Wagner 2021, 157). As with many searches online, users often fall down a wormhole, especially if they are searching for material that interests them. Because this task is enjoyable, they may dedicate more time to it, which means more contact with the target language. In addition to exposing students to authentic language and culture, incorporating content from Instagram and other social media platforms in class increases student participation. Students can interact with other users and peers through comments and direct messages (DMs) in the target language. Because these posts can be informal, students can be creative with their writing, implementing new colloquial expressions, vocabulary, emojis, and verb structures they have seen while analyzing posts on Instagram. This type of communication in the L2 is new and, therefore, exciting for today’s students, as it is something that they do regularly, but now, in another language and with a different purpose. When students actively participate in a task, interacting with classmates and users through photos and comments, a community often forms. If they post original photos to their accounts, they share personal information and images of themselves, friends, and family and express their likes/dislikes and emotions. Uploading personal photos to social media is a vulnerable act. These interactions build a strong classroom community. Students may relate to each other’s photos, feelings, and experiences. If the class forms a strong enough bond, students may use Instagram to make connections in ways that are not directly related to homework assignments and in-class discussions. SPAN301 students, for example, shared announcements for invited lectures (both for the class and other subject areas), showcased their peers’ artwork (from class), and documented class visits to other spaces on campus, like the college art museum. These posts were not prompted by the instructor: they were student-driven. These spontaneous moments and interactions contributed to the creation of a unique community. Students situated the target language within the setting of their home institution. Under a pedagogical lens, social media promotes lifelong learning and connections. When language class ends, many students do not speak or listen to the target language until the next class. Assignments that incorporate social media push students to use the target language outside of class, to make it part of their daily schedule. Furthermore, whereas in traditional classrooms, students often lose touch with each other after the course

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ends, students who have implemented social media in class have the option to remain in touch with their classmates once the semester has ended since they are already following them online. Additionally, all the posts act as an album of memories from the class. This is comparable to study abroad students who exchange their social media handles at the beginning or end of the semester to keep in touch with friends and their host family and view their accounts to relive their experiences abroad. INSTA-COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, AND COMMUNITIES Finding authentic material that is appropriate in terms of content and proficiency for students beginning to study a language may be challenging. When educators consider implementing Instagram in their world language courses, photos and videos are usually the first materials that come to mind. For language learning, however, the captions below the images and users’ comments are equally important and often contain interesting class material. Since Instagram captions and comments tend to be short, they are ideal for Novice students. Those studying Spanish or other romance languages, for instance, can read the written text and pick out cognates, words that look similar in English. Students can recognize patterns in different sets of words: the common Greek and Latin roots that are cognates in English and Spanish, like aud-, to hear, bio-, life, dict-, to speak or tell. As the semester progresses, instructors can introduce students to the concept of false cognates, pairs of words that look and sound similar but that have different meanings, like éxito and exit. As they increase their vocabulary range, Novice students will more easily decipher captions by the end of the semester. Captions and comments on Instagram can build Intermediate and Advanced students’ vocabulary as well, which is important because many at this level feel like their language skills have stopped progressing after a few semesters of language study. The textbook vocabulary lists may seem exhaustive, but they frequently lack everyday words that are helpful to students when they travel abroad or interact with a native speaker. Students need to know words and colloquial expressions that will make them feel more comfortable carrying on ordinary conversations with strangers, either in person, through writing or over social media. For example, students may notice abbreviations like celu for celular (cellphone), peli for película (film), and boli for bolígrafo (pen) in Instagram posts. Students may also be surprised by the number of anglicisms in posts by native speakers, like nice, cool, fashion, and deal. An assignment could entail students categorizing these anglicisms and reflecting on the popularity of some over others or determining which sector is most

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relevant in certain countries where the target language is spoken. Anglicisms speak to the influence of globalization, particularly in the world of advertising, where communication with the largest audience is the goal. In the comments section and videos (short film clips, fragments of songs, commercials, reels) posted on Instagram, students may observe sociolinguistic variations, like the voseo, a substitute for the second person plural pronoun popular in some parts of Latin America. Novice students will benefit from hearing or seeing the difference between tú and vos, and more Advanced students can determine under what conditions each pronoun is used. Intermediate and Advanced students can also follow popular authors on Instagram from the Southern Cone, where the voseo is predominant. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Mafalda is a popular Argentine comic by Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón, also known as Quino. Students can follow @mafaldadigital on Instagram and choose several comic strips to analyze the pronouns and verbs, concentrating on to whom the protagonist is directing her questions and statements to understand the pronouns’ function (Shenk 2014, 375). Because comic strips are so short, this material is ideal for Novice and Intermediate students. More Advanced students can study the comic to develop their vocabulary and gauge their understanding of the author’s satirical political commentary. Like the voseo, students may observe linguistic varieties of Spanish, like Spanglish, in the comments and captions of Instagram. Spanglish is a structured form of code-switching, mixing English and Spanish in the same sentence, and can often lead to the creation of new words. Many Spanish heritage language students (SHLLs) in the United States rely on Spanglish to communicate with family and friends. Although they may speak it freely at home, it is often prohibited or discouraged in the classroom. Since a standardized version of Spanish exists, Spanglish is often frowned upon or seen as a threat. SHLLs who speak or write Spanglish regularly are made to believe that they do not speak Spanish correctly. This attitude is harmful to SHLLs who have grown up listening to Spanglish daily. Seeing Spanglish online fosters linguistic connections in their family’s native language and English, affirming their bilingual identities, expanding their vocabulary, and building their confidence. It allows them to see that millions of people in various contexts use cultural variations, like Spanglish, a reminder of the evolving nature of language. Instructors can also use social media to provide contextualized examples of grammatical topics or vocabulary covered in class. For instance, Intermediate students often struggle with the difference between the imperfect and preterit verb tenses. One task could involve students looking for examples of these two past tenses on social media. Students can share these posts on a post or blog embedded in the course’s LMS, underlining each verb and explaining

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its function. This task has many benefits for L2 learners. Students become more aware of what these verb conjugations look like. The more students see the verbs, the more likely they are to recognize and include them naturally in sentences. Moreover, since the comments and posts that students analyze are authentic, the material is more engaging, especially if learners follow users they admire, like film stars, athletes, or influencers. Something mundane as conjugating and analyzing verbs becomes exciting. Finally, this task requires students to think critically and cognitively about language’s many functions, an essential step in acquisition that textbooks often disregard. Because Instagram currently supports numerous (36!) languages, many taught in U.S. universities, the machine translations of posts can transform into exciting material for Advanced students. Social media captions frequently include figurative language that does not translate correctly into the second language, making the text incomprehensible (Wagner 2021, 161). Noting and correcting these errors builds students’ vocabulary and makes them aware of key linguistic structures. At the same time, through this task, students understand that machine translation is not perfect and that technology is not 100% reliable. Rather than rely on tools like Google Translate for a writing task in the target language, instructors can present machine translation as a tool for exploration and growth in the L2 (Merschel and Munné, 2022). This strategy may deter students from tinkering with Google Translate to complete future assignments and help them view translation in a positive light instead of as a potential source of punishment carried out by an instructor. Besides providing input and opportunities for students to study and analyze language usage in an authentic setting, Instagram and other social networking sites are rich cultural material for L2 students. Language textbooks typically dedicate only a few pages, if that, to culture for each chapter. As seen in the introduction and Chapter 1, culture is often represented as blurbs, small bursts of information that may not have anything to do with the rest of the chapter or, worse, may perpetuate stereotypes. If textbooks include cultural information, it usually is not enough, and because departments tend to rely on the same textbook for several years, the material eventually becomes outdated. As a result, instructors search for material online to supplement their activities because this content is relevant, engaging, and authentic. Social media accounts created by native speakers, that is, material not intended exclusively for L2 students in the United States, are ideal for the language classroom. These accounts offer more personalized cultural content and permit students to follow real people and places. Students can see firsthand a restaurant menu, a schedule of cultural exhibitions at an art museum, and the summer sales in a popular clothing store. For those unfamiliar with Instagram, didactic accounts to learn languages exist on social media. Created by educators, these pedagogically focused accounts keep in mind L2 students.

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As a result, creators may modify the target language or simplify the content. These accounts can help build vocabulary and listening comprehension. However, to engage students with the target culture in the most authentic way possible, instructors and students should search for social media accounts not intended exclusively for L2 learners. Given the overwhelming number of real Instagram posts available to students, instructors may be tempted to let their students loose and encourage them to explore on their own. However, as with any classroom activity, backward design is important. What is the end goal? What should students know and be able to do by the end of the task? What information can social media provide to students that the language textbook and/or the instructor cannot? From there, instructors can create an assessment to measure the learning and plan a sequence of lessons or tasks that will prepare students to complete the assessment successfully. Backward design is essential when using social networking platforms in class because it is likely that some students are using social media in an academic setting for the first time. They may not understand the objective and think that the instructor is integrating technology because it forms part of the latest trend. Students need to understand right from the start why instructors incorporate technology or follow a particular approach. If the instructor lays out the plan beforehand and justifies the digital tool with sound pedagogical reasons that students can understand, they are more likely to follow along and actively participate in the activity. Since Instagram is a visually driven app composed of photos and short videos, assignments can imitate this form of communication. Rather than write a traditional paper or comparative essay on different countries’ cultural customs, why not design an assessment that gives students a chance to experiment with visual communication as a way to share information with classmates and showcase their linguistic and cultural knowledge? Novice high students, for example, can create infographics that show off what they have learned on Instagram. Despite their low proficiency level, Novice students can do a quick visual scan for recognizable words on Instagram posts and make inferences by studying the colors, fonts, hashtags, and any accompanying images. Infographics are an effective visual representation because they break down complex information into bite-sized text and include titles, keywords, and images. Since students have limited space to share information, it becomes easier to select the most relevant material. Novice Spanish learners, for instance, can design infographics that share typical dishes from Spanish-speaking countries (see Appendix C for instructions for a detailed assignment). Using photos from authentic Instagram accounts as inspiration, students can list the ingredients of each dish in the target language. Once they have a final product, students can post their infographics on the course’s LMS. Their classmates can find similarities and differences between different

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dishes and make cultural observations. A seemingly simple assignment of searching for photos on Instagram transforms into a presentational, interpretive, and interpersonal task that promotes target language use outside of the classroom. Intermediate and Advanced Spanish learners can also create infographics, but with a focus on intercultural competence. They can summarize information they discover on Instagram, compare content from two or more countries, and create their own infographic. Taking the previous example on food one step further, Advanced students can reflect on social justice issues in different countries where the target language is spoken and design infographics that highlight disparities or issues related to food sustainability and equity. After posting the infographics to the course’s LMS, students can read their classmates’ and write comparative and reflective essays in the target language, broadening their cultural understanding through peer learning (Granda and McGillicuddy, 2022). In addition to developing students’ linguistic and cultural proficiency, the visual-driven infographic aligns well with Instagram’s primary mode of communication: photos and videos. This type of assessment also encourages creativity, a skill that is often neglected in higher education. Although students can rely on pre-made templates from Canva or PowerPoint to create their infographic, they can fiddle with the design, selecting colors, font, font size, and determine the spacing. In fact, infographic posts that students have come across in their searches may serve as a model. When making these decisions, students must keep in mind accessibility to ensure that the document is accessible to all. They have to decide how they want to present the information visually: text, graphs, percentages, icons, and QR codes. Since students have complete freedom regarding the infographic design, this type of assessment appeals to all types of learners. Those who are less creative can rely on the pre-made templates, whereas more innovative learners can rely on their artistic skills to design a clear and cohesive visual representation from scratch that conveys the unique intersection of language and culture. Students also need to consider inclusivity, particularly in terms of language and character representation in visual content. In the end, designing with accessibility and inclusivity in mind means that material will reach a wider audience. It recognizes the diversity of people who have varying abilities and perspectives at a given time in a particular space. Once instructors have a clear objective in mind for an assessment that integrates social media, they should provide clear guidelines because although social media use may come naturally to some, for others it can prove challenging. Searching on social media for appropriate and interesting content at first may be difficult. Without a set theme or focus, students may feel overwhelmed. If implementing social media as a complement to the language

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textbook, instructors can share ready-made hashtags with students which touch on the textbook’s themes, like food and drinks, university/college life, health, and recreational activities (Fornara). For example, when discussing food, a topic usually covered in the second or third semester of language study, students studying Spanish can do an initial search using the following hashtags on Instagram: #comida + nacionalidad. A search for #comidamexicana produces approximately 2 million posts! Students can view videos of recipes, a short slideshow of why food is important during Day of the Dead, pictures of popular Mexican restaurants all over the world, restaurant menus, fast food announcements, and millions of images of food. Once students feel comfortable on Instagram, they can modify their hashtag searches to include personal dietary preferences, like #comidamexicanavegana. Posts with multiple hashtags may also inspire students to modify their original search and lead them to find something completely new. There truly is no limit. Since social media content often touches on daily culture (food, shopping, travel, etc.) and is pertinent, students are more engaged with the material. Hashtag searches in the target language have the power to expand textbook vocabulary lists to include cultural content and reveal cultural differences. One of the first chapters in a Beginner Spanish textbook includes physical descriptors and emotions. The vocabulary list in these books is usually limited, and little to no cultural references are included. To supplement this material, the instructor can design a task in which students search for a word in the L2 and English and note cultural differences. For example, a search for the word beauty/belleza produces interesting results on social media. As of November 2022, an Instagram search of #belleza mostly includes images of women, make-up products, painted nails, fashion, plastic surgery procedures, and weight loss advertisements. A search for #beauty, on the other hand, includes photos of women and make-up products as well, alongside images of nature, like sunsets, a portrait of a young volleyball player, a woman wearing a hijab, cute dogs, trans people, and impressive architectural sites, like a mosque in Palestine. From these initial searches, the instructor can organize a warm-up or discussion question around the theme of beauty: What are the beauty standards in the United States and who defines them? Based on the images you discovered on Instagram, how do these standards compare to those in the Spanish-speaking world? From the photos on Instagram and previous knowledge, students usually infer that physical beauty is central to Hispanic culture. Beauty pageants in Latin America are an excellent example, with Venezuela once referred to as “una fábrica de reinas.” The country has won a record of 7 Miss Universe and 6 Miss World titles. One of Latin America’s most popular colloquial expressions on beauty and bodies is “No hay mujer fea, sino mal arreglada.” / “There are no ugly women, just poorly groomed ones.” Arreglada, in this

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context, may refer to professional hairdressing services and manicures/pedicures, but also wearing fashionable clothing, using makeup, and constricting one’s weight with the help of undergarments like girdles. For many contest participants, these events are viewed as an opportunity to escape poverty, but participation comes at a price. Contestants undergo plastic surgery at a young age and emotional, mental, and physical hardships for a chance at this opportunity. Depending on the class dynamic and comfort level, the discussion may reach a deeper level: Is there a physical characteristic you wish you could change about yourself? Is plastic surgery popular in the United States? Was/ is it popular in your high school or university? If students are not comfortable answering these personal questions, they may mention how many Latina and Asian women reconstruct their identities so they align more closely with the European aesthetic, an observation that they have gathered from popular culture—even on Instagram if they follow popular makeup influencers. Additional authentic material can complement #belleza, like films (Mariana Rondón’s Pelo malo/Bad hair, 2013), children’s stories (Surma Arzu Brown’s ¡Pelo malo no existe!/Bad Hair Does Not Exist!, 2015), or memoirs (Desiree Bela-Lobedde’s Ser mujer negra en España, 2018). In this regard, hashtag searches open the door to a wealth of other material that helps students understand cultural differences more deeply. Besides searching for cultural content via hashtags, users can discover interesting points of interest with geotags. Students at the home institution may not be bombarded with signs and advertisements in the target language for food and drinks in the town or city where they live in the United States, but Instagram and other social media sites give them an opportunity to explore new places all over the world on their own. As the Instagram activity is student-driven and personalized, students are more likely to be engaged; they “may develop a degree of agency and choice that is similar to the one they have when they use these tools for personal purposes” (Fornara). Much like a student studying abroad who relies on social media to decide what restaurant to go to one night, DM a friend, or search for an upcoming event, students at home can count on Instagram to familiarize themselves with the countries where the target language is spoken. They immerse themselves, albeit virtually, by experiencing the cultural material via visual communication. Additionally, social media affords students the possibility to interact in the target language with the owners of the accounts that they follow. Students can follow musicians, actors, athletes, politicians, and authors. Many of these may offer a “livestream,” meaning a live interview, informal chat, Q&A session, book-read, or concert. A student may not be able to travel abroad, but from the comfort of their dorm room or classroom, they can watch a live music concert. If comments are permitted during these livestreams, students can ask questions and interact with the user and other followers. If they employ

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their language skills and cultural knowledge and understanding in authentic contexts to effectively interact with people, they begin to build intercultural communicative competence (ICC). ICC takes cultural learning one step further by pushing students to become active learners, to explore the culture in order to form new attitudes that lead to an increased awareness of their culture, which encourages them to develop their own identity. From a practical lens, for some students, written communication with a native speaker is far more accessible than in person. This type of connection builds community and boosts students’ confidence. Suppose these students have an opportunity to travel abroad in the future. In that case, this community-building will prove helpful as they have narrowed down their points of interest and perhaps connected directly with native speakers through social media. TEACHING LITERATURE THROUGH INSTAGRAM Reading and analyzing texts is an objective of many humanities programs, including world language departments. After four years of studying the target language, college majors and minors are expected to be proficient in reading and writing. They should be able to read and critically analyze literary works of different genres and write in the target language, obtaining academic literacy (Allen and Paesani 2010, 119). Unfortunately, this objective is not always reached. This may be due to how some literature courses are organized. Many world language departments offer survey courses that cover multiple centuries. These courses, lasting only one semester, provide students with an overview of the historical and literary context that will be helpful if they continue to take upper-level courses in the department, where courses focus on one topic, genre, or period. In broad survey courses, though, students read so many texts in such a limited amount of time that they typically are unable to process the content. Due to the extensive scope of the material in the survey course, the class format is usually lecture-based. Under this type of instruction, connections with the text and students’ personal experiences are rarely made, and students do not take on an active role in their learning. Instructors may rely on in-class discussion questions or design exams to ensure that students can identify the author, genre, and a few main themes. In these tasks, students become passive receivers of information: they simply regurgitate what was shared with them during the class lecture or on the instructor’s PowerPoint. As a result, no meaningful learning occurs, and they make little gains in their linguistic development. This type of learning, referred to as “surface learning” by James M. Lang is “shallow and short-term” (2018, 2). Students memorize facts, principles, dates, and other information, skimming the surface rather

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than delving deeper into the textual analysis. Because of this instruction, personal connections with the text, referred to by Lang as “deeper learning,” are rarely made: Deep learning occurs when students see or create connections between the course material and their own lives and experiences, when they have the opportunity to take what they are learning and process it in challenging and creative ways, and when they take active control of their learning and the ways in which they demonstrate it to their professor. (2018, 2)

Without connecting interpretation to students’ own experiences, creating a space for dialogue, and developing a deeper understanding of the material, it can become easy for students to forget what they have read. The number of texts blurs together. The course does not leave any lasting impressions and may set the tone for future courses in the department, dissuading students from taking more upper-level classes or pursuing a major. After graduating from college, it is unlikely that students recall all the literature they read in these intensive courses. In addition to the fast-paced nature of these literature courses, many upper-level texts, like those from the Medieval or Early Modern periods in Spain, are linguistically challenging. Written during or before the seventeenth century, these works contain vocabulary and grammatical structures unfamiliar to students. As a result, they require slow and careful reading for L2 learners, which is an additional challenge because today’s students, much to instructors’ chagrin, are accustomed to immediate results. As Jules Whicker (2019), Senior Teaching Fellow in Hispanic Studies at the University of Birmingham, describes: In a world where everything is claimed and felt to be urgent, comprehension required and assumed to be instant, and memory regarded as increasingly redundant, it is no small challenge to find ways to promote the unhurried, detailed, incremental study of how meaning may be found in texts—and foreign-language ones at that. (124)

Indeed, intellectual perseverance is a skill that college students struggle with. They have been raised in a world that runs on fast-paced technology. The intrinsic pleasure that many scholars from prior generations have experienced after deciphering a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century text, word for word, with a dictionary close by, is something that most of today’s students have not experienced. It is not because these students are not motivated but because technology has changed how they learn. Students look up words using Google Translate, not a dictionary; read primary texts off their tablets or directly from their course’s LMS; and take notes with a stylus and a

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tablet—or do not take notes at all, and instead, take pictures of the blackboard with their smartphones at the end of class. Although there is concern that the increased use of technology has reduced reading habits among today’s students, their way of reading has simply changed, moving from print to digital media (Puig 2019, 105). In my opinion, twenty-first-century students want to be challenged and will feel pleasure after successfully tackling a close reading, but they need the skills to do so. One solution is for instructors of survey or introductory-level literature courses to dedicate one or two class sessions to guide students through the art of reading, specifically strategies to help them deduce the meaning of words through context, interact with the text, and post-reading reflection.3 Technology is another solution to make reading and interpretation engaging. On the one hand, the interpretive mode of communication is fairly easy to achieve in a traditional literature course: students read and analyze texts and comment on them during class discussion. This approach has been working for centuries, so why change it? On the other hand, reading hard copies of texts seems outdated when many of today’s students read books directly off their Kindle, tablet, computer, or phone. With classes entirely over Zoom and assessments completed online during the pandemic, some instructors embraced the opportunity to transform their students’ reading experience using technology. Social annotation tools, like Hypothes.is and Perusall, allow users to read a text online together. Readers can highlight, take notes, ask and respond to questions with texts and emojis, and include links to supplementary material. Students work collaboratively, honing their analytical skills in the L2 and building community outside of the classroom. These digital tools ensure that students interact with the text and their classmates, not directly with the teacher, in a more traditional, lecture-based model. This type of engagement aligns with the multiliteracies approach, which encourages students to take on an active role in their learning. Readers create meaning by interacting with the text and, at the same time, develop their language skills. Besides the intensive nature of survey courses and students’ desire for immediate results, many literature instructors assign traditional homework questions that align with course readings. These assignments help build students’ vocabulary, guide them through the readings and provide them with an opportunity to practice their analytical and writing skills. Unfortunately, instructors may not collect or grade these assignments, so gauging students’ comprehension of the text and assessing their writing skills is out of the question. Upper-level instructors tend to rely on class participation and more formal assessments, like exams and papers, to check students’ understanding, analytical skills, and language proficiency. Although these assessments are useful, they fall back on the more antiquated view of communication across the four skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The National

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Standards, instead, offers a “Communicative Framework” which focuses on the three modes that emphasize the context and purpose of the communication: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational, described in detail in the introduction. In an upper-level course that requires significant reading, it is quite easy to fulfill the interpretive and presentational modes through readings, homework questions, research papers, and oral presentations. If the course is small enough, students can discuss texts and films in pairs or small groups, fulfilling the interpersonal mode. But how can upper-level instructors move away from paper and oral assignments and redesign assessments, so the three modes of communication are more authentic, relevant, and innovative? More specifically, under the multiliteracies approach, how can pedagogical tasks mirror how today’s college students truly communicate with each other—all while integrating culture, making connections and comparisons, and building community? For optimal language acquisition, communication should be authentic and meaningful and, keeping in mind the objective of this chapter, relevant to how today’s students express themselves. Sandy Cutshall shares the following example in ACTFL’s The Language Educator (February 2012): When people read a news article, how do they typically respond to it? They probably do not complete a fill-in-the-blank exercise, translate it, or answer a list of questions (35–36). A task that has readers summarize what they had just read and share their opinion is more likely. Even so, these tasks are communicative-driven in the traditional sense of the word: speaking and listening. What about authentic communication that aligns with the digital mind of twenty-first-century students? In all likelihood, after reading a news article online, which falls under the interpretive mode, today’s college students will turn to social media to express their opinion in written text, including emojis, an example of presentational communication. Besides discussing recent news, conversation topics outside of class— abroad or at the home institution—frequently touch on course content, like books, and can be transformed into presentational and interpersonal tasks for class. Discussing how challenging, easy, or engaging a novel is can transform into a conversation starter. In recent years, students have showcased their favorite books (or films, music, etc.) online. An artsy photo of a student reading a book outside or a strategically placed book on top of an antique table may garner numerous “likes” and comments from followers. Highly motivated students may opt to talk about their favorite novels on social media platforms like TikTok or YouTube. The #BookTok hashtag has gained popularity, with over 77 billion views since September 2022. Users record a oneminute (or less) video sharing book recommendations, character analyses, highlighted quotes, dramatic and emotional endings, reading timelapse videos, aesthetically pleasing color-coded bookshelves, and popular bookstore

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displays. Similarly, BookTube consists of people who vlog, or create video logs, about books on YouTube. These videos cover different genres and are usually longer than #BookToks.4 Besides sharing content, these platforms create community. In fact, #BookTok began in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. If instructors wish to create an interpersonal task based on these videos and foster community, classmates can listen to each other’s videos, make comments, compare and contrast works, and create book trailers or reviews based on the material. Tasks that encourage collaboration make students feel connected not only with the target language but also with each other outside of the classroom. During the pandemic, instructors had no choice but to employ technology to engage students over Zoom, and many continue to do so. Instructors embed digital games and polls in their PowerPoints to gauge students’ understanding of the material (and to keep them awake). Assessments frequently include various options. Rather than write a paper, students can record a #BookTok or BookTube, narrate a digital story, design an infographic, or create an informative podcast based on their research. In general, instructors should “build [. . .] upon what fascinates [students] instead of working against it” (Dafoe 2013, 89) and consider alternate modes of pedagogy and assessment that promote students’ active learning and collaboration. In general, instructors can design engaging assessments that incorporate team-based learning (TBL), gamification, cartography, and digital projects.5 These assignments push students to think outside of the box and require them to produce material that can be shared with a larger audience. As a result, these assessments reflect authentic communication. In what follows below, I describe the course learning goals and Instagram assignment designed for an upper-level literature course at Amherst College, followed by additional ideas on how to implement social media for literacy purposes. In SPAN301, a 300-level course at Amherst College, students are introduced to the diverse literatures and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world over the course of six centuries, from the Middle Ages to the present. Students learn the tools, language, and critical vocabulary for advanced work reading the canon of Hispanic literature from Spain, Latin America, and the Caribbean Basin, identifying aesthetic trends, historical periods, and diverse genres such as poetry, narrative, theater, and film. The course includes a wide variety of authors of different national, political, and artistic persuasions and an array of linguistic styles. Daily readings and assignments, mainly composed of comprehension questions, in-class discussions, film viewings, response papers, and/or exams, help students refine the four communication skills, and learn to analyze, synthesize, compare, and differentiate multiple genres. For the final project, students apply basic research tools and skills

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to their academic writing in Spanish either in a traditional research/literary analysis paper or most recently, in a creative project. Along with these more traditional assessments, the course in spring 2018 incorporated Instagram. Like any classroom activity, pedagogical planning is of the utmost importance. Even if the tool is attractive from a multimedia standpoint, it could completely fail without detailed instructions, careful scaffolding, and clearly defined learning objectives. Keeping in mind the lengthy list of texts to cover in only thirteen weeks in SPAN301, I designed a student-generated assessment in order to help students retain information more easily and engage them with the material in an innovative way. Hands-on, student-centered learning has been described as the “generation effect,” which states that “in most cases, information is more likely to be remembered when it was studied under conditions that required learners to produce (or generate) some or all of the material themselves, versus reading what others had prepared” (Bertsch and Pesta 2014, 71). Through this assignment, I also aimed to gauge students’ understanding of the material before class and allow them to assess their own knowledge in collaboration with their classmates. Finally, throughout the semester, my goal was to utilize this assessment to understand better students’ learning processes, specifically, the connections they were making between the course content and their own lives. With these three objectives in mind, for specific readings, students had to read a text from the course and upload an original, digital visual representation (photo) in response to an assigned hashtag and share it on their Instagram account. Classmates used critical thinking skills to connect the image and course material by writing at least two responses on their peers’ posts. At the end of the semester, some students recycled photos and comments and designed a visually driven digital project that expanded on a particular topic or theme covered in the semester. Activities that involve students posting original photos and videos on social media, like Instagram, and commenting on each other’s captions, fall into the category of redefinition under the SAMR model. That is, this task would be impossible to re-create without technology. In a traditional college-level literature course, tasks typically range from substitution to modification. Students read the texts, many of which are now available online (substitution), rely on online dictionaries to supplement the reading (augmentation), and during class or for homework, students may be exposed to multimedia resources that may increase their understanding of the text (modification). It is rare for activities in upper-level courses to reach redefinition, which is due to several factors, including but not limited to a lack of knowledge on the existence of digital tools and the understanding of their power to promote creative changes in and outside of the classroom.

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Using Instagram was a meaningful way to break down the traditional barriers to teaching literature and bring it to life by including visual elements that enhanced the text. The photos often served as a warm-up to promote deeper reflection for discussion time and in-class activities. By transforming the literature into something personal and, therefore, relatable and exciting, students were more actively engaged with the reading. They participated more frequently in class and, at the end of the course, were more easily able to recall texts they had read at the beginning of the semester. With digital tools like Instagram, teachers transform a student’s experience, redefining a traditional task of interpretation, discussion, and presentation to create a novel, collaborative, and dynamic classroom. In the next part of this chapter, I will showcase some examples of students’ Instagram posts from SPAN301: Literature and Culture of the Hispanic World and highlight a few benefits of Instagram, namely increased linguistic production and cultural exposure, community, and creativity, and touch on ACTFL’s other 2 Cs: Comparisons and Connections. BUILDING COMMUNICATION SKILLS WITH INSTAGRAM Many survey courses, such as the one offered at Amherst College, are organized chronologically. As a result, the most challenging texts, linguistically and culturally speaking, tend to be at the beginning of the semester. For students reading a text in the target language for the first time, certain genres may be an additional obstacle. Poetry, for example, is often viewed as obsolete and off-putting to some students. In general, poetic language is charged with meaning; an ordinary dictionary to look up unfamiliar words may not offer enough support. Readers may have to rely on specialized online dictionaries, like the Diccionario de autoridades, published between 1726–1739, that list the word’s meaning from the text’s period. These texts can be tedious to decipher and thus, for L2 learners (and Generation Z), this process may be daunting; they may be turned off by reading poetry altogether. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, this generation is accustomed to immediate results and works best if they are actively engaged in the task and can bring their own knowledge into the equation. Instructors must reach students halfway through digital tools and by finding a connection to make the material accessible, relevant, and engaging. If reading poetry is not appealing, what other material can supplement the reading to make it inclusive and relatable to students? Incorporating additional material, like an audio file of the poem, films, artwork, music, and photos, can help students reach a higher and deeper level of learning. Through this content, students enhance

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the interpretation exercise and bring their own multilayered analysis to the reading. As a result, this task may build their confidence in reading different genres in L2 in the future, and challenging texts, like poems, will no longer seem impossible to analyze. In addition to using authentic, pre-made material to improve their understanding of a text, students can create their own content through Instagram. When Instagram is incorporated in an academic setting, like a literature course, students transform into co-creators and critical readers. They are no longer skimming a text to answer general comprehension questions designed by the instructor. They have read the text, chosen a specific passage or theme that supports or refutes an assigned hashtag, and then uploaded an original photo on social media to express their ideas. This exercise requires students to read actively, critically, and purposefully: • • • • • •

What is the author’s general message? What words or images does the author use to convey this point? Why are these words and images important? Who is the target audience of the text? How would this text have been perceived when it was written? What does this text mean to me in 2023?

Students can view their classmates’ posts, reflecting on what they read and their peers’ interpretations, noting similarities and/or differences among the group in additional posts and replies. One of the first poems that students read in SPAN301 is “Soneto XXIII” by Garcilaso de la Vega, a sixteenth-century Spanish poet. Using images from nature to describe a woman’s fleeting beauty, Garcilaso transmits the well-known trope of carpe diem to readers: En tanto que de rosa y azucena se muestra el color en vuestro gesto, y que vuestro mirar ardiente, honesto, enciende al corazón y lo refrena; y en tanto que el cabello, que en la vena del oro se escogió, con vuelo presto, por el hermoso cuello blanco, enhiesto, el viento mueve, esparce y desordena: coged de vuestra alegre primavera el dulce fruto, antes que el tiempo airado cubra de nieve la hermosa cumbre; marchitará la rosa el viento helado. Todo lo mudará la edad ligera por no hacer mudanza en su costumbre.

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In Figure 2.1, the student’s response is a literal representation of the poem and the assigned hashtag #labelleza (#beauty). The photo focuses on the imagery described by the poet, namely the presence of roses in full bloom on a beautiful spring day. As the instructor, I sometimes jumped into the conversations to encourage more reflection, especially for the first few posts. I replied to the photo by citing a verse from the same poem, “Coged de vuestra alegre primavera,” which aligns well with the selected image. This verse is particularly noteworthy as it marks a sudden change in the poem’s tone with the vosotros command form. The poem takes on a rushed feeling toward the end; time passes quickly, and the poet urges readers to embrace it before it is too late. The original author provides her interpretation of the flowers: “For me, the flowers represent a time of new beginnings and hope for the future; at the same time, they represent fragility and life’s transitory state,” which is captured at the end of the poem, with the imagery of snow and wind covering the rose. The photo reinforces the students’ understanding of the poem and provides a clear visual image of nature’s fleeting beauty. Another photo, based on the same poem, depicts a beautiful nature scene. The student connects the panoramic view during sunset of the college

Figure 2.1.  Student Response to Garcilaso de la Vega “Soneto XXIII” Photo credit: Sophia Maldonado ’20

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baseball field and the nearby mountains to the poem’s message and hashtag. The photo prompts a total of four comments from classmates. Below is a loose translation of one of the classmate’s responses to the photo: This view is the one that changes the most during the year—the leaves change from green, red, orange, and then they are covered in snow. Through this cycle, we can appreciate the passing of time. Similarly, women, who are often compared to nature and the Earth, experience menstrual cycles every month.

Her classmate connects the major theme of carpe diem to the changing seasons that notoriously characterize New England, an interpretation similar to the author of Figure 1. However, her classmate’s initial interpretation develops into a deeper sharing of ideas and clarification, specifically in regard to the idea that women after “ciertas ocasiones/certain occasions” stop being appreciated or admired. The author clarifies her message, explaining that today’s society believes that when women turn thirty or have children, they begin to lose their beauty. These two photos/posts in response to #belleza and Garcilaso’s poem reveal how social media has the potential to push students to think critically and more deeply about a text. In the latter post, the student connects the themes of a sixteenth-century poem to a relevant, debatable topic: beauty standards and gendered ageism from the twenty-first century, a topic that was discussed later in class at length. She read an Advanced-level text, interpreted the author’s message within the cultural mindset and perspective of sixteenth-century Spain, fulfilling the interpretive mode, and discovered a connection that made the material relatable to Generation Z. By establishing Connections, an ACTFL C, the student transformed an obsolete text into something relevant for the rest of the class (and her online followers). These connections will help students recall what they read months or perhaps years later because the text becomes personal. Not only did students become more critical readers of authentic texts as they examined themes more closely, but they also became stronger, more dedicated writers despite the assignment’s principal focus on content. Whereas other digital tools like discussion boards can sometimes feel forced when students comment on each other’s responses, the interaction between students on Instagram reveals a unique level of engagement and speaks to students’ comfort with technology and familiarity with social media. Although students may need time to adjust to using Instagram in an academic context, their use of social media, for the most part, is second nature. When they complete a class assignment by posting a photo or leaving a comment, they “los[e] track of time as a result of being fully engaged in an activity” (Egbert, 2005). By encouraging the organic development of ideas, the Instagram activity produces genuine interaction and engagement that increases students’

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motivation. As a result, they spend more time on thinking about the task outside the class, resulting in a deeper comprehension of the course material. Indeed, the SPAN301 posts often exceeded the word limit of the assignment. Students would frequently write or add more comments in response to their classmates’ inquiries, proving that the word limit is secondary when students find an activity engaging. This may seem contradictory when considering the nature of social media, its emphasis on limited characters, and instant messaging that thrives on succinct ideas and communication. However, expression takes precedence when students are fully immersed in the material. The visibility of social media posts also prompted students to pay more attention to their writing. Knowing that they had an audience (classmates and, if the account is public, the digital world) motivated students to submit their most polished work. Writing tasks that fully engage students results in better editing, fewer errors, and, therefore, improved final products (Dafoe 2013, 5). Throughout the semester, most of the students’ writing improved, especially in relation to accent marks, punctuation, and verb tenses. This observation coincides with Vázquez Cano’s study (2012) on the benefits of using Twitter in secondary education. After successfully incorporating Twitter in an interdisciplinary program in three high schools in the region of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, Vázquez Cano noted a significant improvement in students’ linguistic competency, specifically improved academic writing skills that included the integration of appropriate vocabulary, a focus on correctly spelled words, and the ability to self-correct (2012, 143). SPAN301 students often corrected their mistakes after posting. One student in particular regularly used an asterisk to highlight her error(s) as seen in the following post: Esta foto conecta con el poema perfectamente. Che empezó la lucha para independencia para Cuba. Él viajó por mucho de Sudamérica y vio la pobreza y la explotación de Latinoamérica por los Estados Unidos. En el poema, Roosevelt se ve como un capitalista que quiere explotar Latinoamérica (específicamente Panamá, con el canál).

A few minutes after completing the assignment, the student replied to her original post with one word: canal*. The asterisk to denote an error typically appears in text messages or chats, not traditional homework assignments. The fact that this student self-corrected her work reflects her level of engagement with the assignment. A seemingly minor detail, the asterisk reveals that the student read over her response at least once, that is one more time than she probably would have if she had completed a homework assignment that was to be read only by her instructor. Self-corrected work encourages metacognition. As a result, students become more involved in the task at hand and

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consequently, more aware of their own learning process. This example of self-correction also supports the idea that by incorporating digital tools in the classroom, homework does not feel like “busy work”; it takes on a deeper meaning that empowers students to actively participate and communicate with their peers. In short, using digital tools and giving students the freedom to post photos and respond to comments in an authentic way leads to personalized, self-directed learning (Vázquez Cano 2012, 145). The collaborative nature of Instagram lends well to an informal, colloquial writing style and tone that differs from the scholarly essays that students are accustomed to; each post and comment encourages self-expression. With these assignments, students have to consider word choice, tone, and style. The increased interaction with their classmates helps students develop their voices. Using Instagram in an academic context promotes target language development in new and creative ways, playing with different styles and words that help students become stronger writers. Collaborative assignments can enhance knowledge acquisition, but also lead to critical awareness of both content and linguistic form. CULTURE, CONNECTIONS, AND COMPARISONS THROUGH INSTAGRAM The majority of survey courses at the college level expose students to a broad range of cultural material, including but not limited to poetry, plays, novels, and short stories. These readings enrich students’ cultural understanding, fulfilling another of ACTFL’s Cs, Cultures. Incorporating technology in a literature course pushes students to take ownership of their cultural material and understanding. In the case of the Instagram activity, the photos that students select complement or refute the principal text and help them understand the society and values of the period. These authentic texts raise intercultural issues, pushing students to make comparisons and connections with the material and their personal lives, which in turn, helps them to understand their own culture more fully. In this regard, culture and communication are inextricably linked. For the SPAN301 Instagram assignment, students often made connections to texts, media, or historical figures that they had learned in other classes or come across under different circumstances earlier in the semester, fulfilling ACTFL’s Connection standards. For example, in the same semester of this course, an Amherst College theater group performed Urinetown, a satirical comedy musical that premiered in 2001 about a corporation that outlawed private bathrooms and charged people to use public amenities. It satirizes the legal system, capitalism, corporate mismanagement, and social

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irresponsibility. Several students connected the musical’s themes to Icíar Bollain’s film, Even the Rain (2010) about Bolivia’s Water War, included in the course material, and the colonization of America, present in Hernán Cortés’s letters and Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brevísima relación, both sixteenth-century texts covered in class. One student went as far as to compare one of the characters from the musical to the figure of Malinche, which we had studied earlier in the semester. Her observation, loosely translated below, fulfilled another of ACTFL’s 5 Cs, Comparison: The woman named Hope used her connections with the UGC company (the director of the company was her father) to help those who started the rebellion. Similarly, Malinche used her intelligence and her relationship with Cortés to facilitate better communication between Cortés and the indigenous population, and also to improve this group’s situation.

These cultural connections speak to the interdisciplinary nature of the course, the high level of engagement, and how this assignment helped develop students’ critical thinking skills. At several points during the semester, students also connected the material to different spaces on the college’s campus, specifically the college library (Figure 2.2), the residence hall (Figure 2.3) designated to promote the Hispanic language and culture, and an administrative building. These connections speak to the relevance of these texts’ themes, which add purpose to the readings that many students appreciate. In survey courses, students often question why they are required to read texts from the thirteenth century. Showing students that these texts are not as obsolete as they think brings immediate value to the content. It also proves that they do not have to stray far from campus to make connections with the target language. This interrelation can take place outside of the classroom without traveling to the country of the target language. Making comparisons and connections between the target country’s culture and students’ own culture is quite common while studying abroad and starts the moment the student steps out of the airplane (or maybe even during the flight). However, creating connections between an authentic text for a course and other material or prior knowledge does not happen as organically. Usually, instructors will direct students to make these connections in a warm-up activity or with carefully directed discussion questions, like Does this text remind you of another text that we read in class? How?; Compare and contrast the following two texts; and so forth. Through the incorporation of technology, like Instagram, in a literature or language classroom, students make their own connections and comparisons more naturally because the task is student-driven. They select the photos that, for them, best align with the

Figure 2.2.  Frost Library at Amherst College Photo credit: Carmen Granda

Figure 2.3.  Newport House, Residence Hall, Amherst College Photo credit: Carmen Granda

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assigned hashtag or the theme of the text. The photos become the focal point not only for the homework but also for the in-class discussion. Since students post the photos without a caption, the interpretation, that is, the connections and comparisons of the material, is completely open to interpretation. BUILDING COMMUNITY ON SOCIAL MEDIA Not only do students make connections with the material, but also with each other. When twenty-first-century instructors reflect on the idea of community in relation to their language course, many images may come to mind, most of which probably include the physical classroom: a group of students sitting at their desks with their books open, taking notes or talking to each other while participating in a communicative task, the instructor at the front of the room or circulating among groups, and a PowerPoint with detailed instructions for a class activity or discussion questions projected in the background. In this visualization, instructors most likely imagine all students happy and interacting with each other because part of their goal is to create a space in which their students feel a sense of belonging and trust, not only with the instructor but especially with each other. Although the image described above is certainly achievable, it does not reflect the twenty-first-century depiction of a classroom community because the classroom is no longer a static space made up of four walls. The concept of community can be reimagined and expanded to include the billions of people that make up today’s digital world. When instructors utilize technology like Instagram to achieve digital immersion in the target language and culture, the traditional definition or image of what community or social interaction looks like in and outside the classroom does not radically change from what is experienced in a study abroad program. Communities, ACTFL’s 5th and final C, proposes that students “communicate and interact with cultural competence to participate in multilingual communities at home and around the world” (National Standards, 2015). That is, L2 learners engage in activities that make them feel part of the target language community. Frequently these opportunities occur while abroad or through a community service project organized by the home institution. During study abroad, when students have to pay for a concert ticket, order a coffee, and interact with strangers for the first time in the target language, acquisition begins to take place. In this regard, under the ACTFL Communities standard, the image and definition of school community expands to take on a global dimension because “learners use the language both within and beyond the classroom to interact and collaborate in their community and the globalized world” (National Standards, 2015).

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Social media sites, like Instagram, create a space where students can become members of a community, united by their interest in the target language, that meet outside of the classroom. The steps in which students take to form part of and interact with this community do not differ greatly from the steps taken by students participating in a study abroad program. Before joining a social media network, students first need to define and understand their own (online) identity. What distinguishes Instagram from other social media platforms is that users can post photos and videos using their mobile devices. For today’s students, who are constantly on their phone, the device becomes an extension of their identity. To open an Instagram account, students create an original username which can represent who they are (or who they would like to be) in the target language. By constructing a new name for this virtual world, learners become agents: “the online world facilitates the construction of an individual’s agency, identity and voice through various artefacts and practices that individuals create through participation” (Tan and Kim 2019, 197). They can more easily explore and experiment with this new identification, which in turn paves the way for a more student-centered approach to learning. If all students create an online identity, they can more easily bond over their shared interest and objective: to immerse themselves in the target language and culture in their online community. In a similar fashion, when choosing to study abroad for a semester or year, students must ensure that their passport is up-to-date and submit paperwork to obtain a visa from the consulate. Like opening a social media account, securing a passport for international travel is the first step toward the collective immersion experience. On the one hand, the passport confirms the L2 learner’s “real” identity: name, birthday, birthplace, and nationality. On the other hand, the passport gives L2 learners the opportunity to begin to reflect on their identity and how it may change, and consequently, shape, their experience abroad. Studying abroad and joining a new digital community, like Instagram, gives learners the opportunity to think about their identity in a new cultural context: “In order to gain a critical understanding of social interactions with others, students must learn, in a sense, to step outside of themselves, to take on the perspectives of others, and to integrate these perspectives coherently into their own beliefs and understandings” (McBride 2009, 41). Virtual and real study abroad experiences revolve around self-discovery, often leading to some type of transformation: a reaffirmation of the L2 learner’s identity, a questioning of the L2 learner’s identity, or a completely different identity due to the new environment—physical or digital. Taking this idea one step further, social media platforms and study abroad programs are spaces where learners can perform identities. On popular sites like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, users create a profile that expresses their identity—fictitious or real—and rely on multimedia and text to

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showcase it. Over time, users’ profiles may change to reflect new interests and new identities. This experimentation and development of new identities is similar to what goes on when students acquire a second language according to Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000): “This process often involves a stage where the learner experiences a loss, leaving behind one (L1) context and feeling forced to leave behind the sense of self that corresponded to that context” (as cited in McBride 2009, 39). This same complex process of identity-seeking also occurs among many L2 students who travel abroad for the first time and experience a new language and culture. They adopt new habits and start thinking so much in the L2 that they feel like they begin to lose their L1, and consequently, their identity associated with the L1. When students live in a new country for a semester or academic year, it is common for them to undergo some type of transformation, a direct result of their daily exposure to the target language and culture. Little moments like riding the metro, ordering their favorite coffee at a café, and watching a popular TV program with their host family contribute to students’ transformations. They immerse themselves in the language and culture by being present in an authentic space. They take on multiple identities, straddling their new life and their past, associated with the L1. But many students will not fully realize that they have been juggling multiple identities until they return home and experience reverse culture shock, a common reaction after a significant time in a new country and culture that requires a readjustment period as one comes to terms with a new identity situated in an old setting (see Conclusion). One can argue, though, that with Instagram and other mobile platforms, learning is also situated within a real-world setting, resulting in daily exposure and interaction that is similar to that of a student traveling abroad who is exposed to the language and culture daily (Cheon et al., 2012; Romrell 2014, 4). Social media networks promote “authentic social and communicative behavior that typically happens in classrooms” and, during study abroad, “instead of merely simulating other modes of interaction, technology mediated communication is, in and of itself, the real thing” (Sykes et al. 2008, 529). L2 learners using Instagram for academic purposes are neither restricted to the community nor the content that makes up their course. As with any social media platform, there is no limit to what users can search for or how they interact. They can spend hours visiting the accounts of restaurants in different Spanish-speaking countries, salivating over popular dishes, and making linguistic and cultural comparisons. Searching for popular hashtags can also lead students down a cultural rabbit hole, similar to the students abroad who search for restaurants in an app. In both instances, the student becomes an active participant of the learning process: “By integrating new knowledge into one’s own perspective, one revises one’s way of seeing the world, thus rewriting the self” (McBride 2009, 42). Either with a multimodal text or a

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human being (virtually or in person), the L2 learner develops their language skills through meaningful interaction through real and digital life experiences. Like a study abroad program in which students attend classes in the target language at a local university, becoming a new member of that campus, in a L2 classroom that implements social media, students join an online community. Successful language learning and acquisition take place through interactions, so social media platforms like Instagram, can provide students an authentic, meaningful space for communication and community-building (McBride 2009, 40), similar to the clubs and organizations on campuses abroad. In both the digital realm and study abroad, students form part of a collective identity through collaboration, a twenty-first-century skill. They must work together to create a positive learning space in and outside of the classroom. When study-abroad students fully immerse themselves in a new culture, they feel a sense of belonging. They make friends with native speakers, learn their neighbors’ names, and become “regulars” at their favorite restaurants and cafés. They also tend to feel a sense of belonging by being part of the semester- or year-long cohort of the study abroad program. Similarly, as homework assignments on Instagram require that students post photos and write and respond to peers’ comments, a tight-knit community is possible. Students collaborate on each other’s posts, interacting with each other by interpreting their classmates’ images and leaving their impressions. By “actively participat[ing] in the creation and circulation of new content” via a social networking site, among a group, students form part of a participatory culture (Jenkins 2008, 331). In this participatory culture, a strong sense of belonging, trust, and well-being is created in and outside the classroom because, at the end of the day, the students are the ones who create the content and shape the assignment. When this occurs, they tend to share more personal posts. One SPAN301 student posted a photo with a close-up of her face in response to Garcilaso de la Vega’s poem described earlier on women’s fleeting beauty. These intimate posts expose students in such a personal way that is challenging, if not impossible, to replicate in a traditional classroom setting. If students make these posts public, they are open for the whole world to see. Posting such personal photos reflects a high level of engagement with the assignment, but also demonstrates a strong comfort level that can be achieved through ACTFL’s Communities standard. This example and others on Instagram demonstrate that students take risks with their online learning. This feeling is akin to students who are studying in a new country and have to ask for directions or order a drink for the first time. Both must throw themselves out there, taking risks, but through different modes—one through verbal and nonverbal communication, like gestures, the other through visual communication (photos) and written text. These creative, sometimes risk-taking posts are a form of

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self-expression and can help students better understand themselves and, in turn, foster connections, especially for those who are more timid or reserved in class (McBride 2009, 41). By implementing digital tools, all students have an opportunity to express themselves through various modes of communication, a goal of differentiated instruction (see Chapter 1). Technology helps equalize student voices, ensuring successful learning in a diverse and inclusive space. Incorporating inclusive technology in the classroom is a first step to reducing inequity. Such vulnerable images and posts in SPAN301 frequently provoked and invited reactions from peers. In fact, they often motivated followers not enrolled in the class to share their insights, as seen in the comment posted by a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) from Spain, who had lived on campus the previous year. Her comment is loosely translated below: The conversations about the beauty canons and the preconceived ideas of what is beauty or what makes a woman beautiful are very interesting. I hope that the moment arrives in which among all of us, we define what is beauty based on acceptance and self-love. And, honestly, seeing what you write, I don’t think that my hopes are utopic.

Not only did this former FLTA feel moved to leave a comment, but her post validates and uplifts the female students in the course. The incorporation of digital tools within an academic space expands the definition of community to include those outside of the traditional classroom walls. It has no limits and opens the door to possibilities that stretch far beyond the college campus. Given the vast network that makes up social media sites, students may choose to expand their community outside of the course and interact with other users in the L2. This low-stake, informal communication will help L2 students build relationships with others in the target language via social networking sites and become “autonomous, lifelong learners” (McBride 2009, 35). This concept of creating lifelong learners is highlighted in ACTFL’s Communities Standard: “Students show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment” (National Standards, 2015). This autonomy and enjoyment is possible in and outside of the classroom—both the physical, traditional space and the virtual environment. SOCIAL MEDIA CREATIVITY In addition to fostering collaboration, incorporating social media in the classroom encourages creativity, an important yet often neglected

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twenty-first-century skill in higher education. When implementing Instagram, SPAN301 students not only have to choose an image that connects with either the assigned hashtag or some aspect of the course material, but they also have to consider the photo composition. From there, the students must think about the subject(s), angle, background, and lighting. Instagram’s numerous filters and borders can dramatically alter the appearance and meaning of the photo and add a personalized touch to students’ learning experiences that would be challenging to replicate in a traditional classroom. The attention that some SPAN301 students gave to the photo’s many elements reflects their engagement with the assignment. As with any self-directed task, students tend to be more invested in their work when they are in charge and when their classmates are their main audience, as seen in a student response to “Romance de la pérdida de Alhama,” a fifteenth-century text. The student uploaded an original photo of an envelope with the word Alhama in black bold print in the center. The envelope had been strategically burnt around the edges. As with the first interpretation of Garcilaso’s sonnet, this representation is literal. Nevertheless, the student’s creative submission is noteworthy. She took the time to gather these materials and re-create a memorable scene from the romance, which caught the attention of her classmates, one of whom shared the following: Although I suppose that this photo is based on the part of the poem when the king burns the letters, it also makes me think of a few sayings in Spanish. The first [concerns] fate, and there’s a saying (also in English): ‘It’s written in the cards.’ The second is a reference to when the Moorish king kills the messenger. There’s also a saying in English that is ‘Don’t kill the messenger.’

By sharing these sayings with her classmates, the student makes an obsolete text come alive in the twenty-first century. Making these connections—in this case, in English and Spanish—is key to keeping students motivated to continue reading and sharing their ideas. Figure 2.4. depicts a student’s response to Tirso de Molina’s El burlador de Sevilla, a seventeenth-century text that describes the numerous plights of Don Juan, a fictional figure who has come to represent a male seducer. The student focused on the theme of broken promises, an important part of Don Juan’s seduction ploys. She posted a black and white photo of her hand with a ring next to it. The deliberate use of these two somber colors adds a touch of mysteriousness, an element that reinforces Don Juan’s persona. What is even more notable, however, is the quality of the comments. As the instructor, I connected her post to a recent news article in Spanish on Ed Sheeran, a popular singer who, at the time of the course, in 2018, challenged

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Figure 2.4.  Student Instagram Response to #donjuan Photo credit: Deborah Williams ’20

gender roles by wearing an engagement ring. Below is a translation of her response: It’s fantastic! I love Ed Sheeran and I believe that other men should follow him. I plan to give my partner an engagement ring in the future. My husband should feel so sure of his masculinity that the act of wearing a ring does not feel emasculating. At the end of the day, we are making a promise to each other so the two of us should wear a ring to remind ourselves [of this commitment].

In her personal reflection, the student comments on how she plans to break gender roles in her own marriage, a stark contrast to the behavior of the seventeenth-century’s protagonist, Don Juan. The number of creative hashtags in the post speaks to the student’s high level of engagement with the assignment

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and the strong sense of community that she formed among her classmates and public through social media. In addition to the course hashtag (#SPAN301) and the assigned hashtag for El burlador de Sevilla (#donjuan), the student added #téllez (the real name of Tirso de Molina, Gabriel Téllez), #matrimonio (marriage), #laaventura (adventure), #lapromesarota (broken promises), and #promesa (promise). The student accessed the content in an innovative and creative way that spoke to her, giving it a new purpose. ASSESSMENT AND CHALLENGES OF USING INSTAGRAM IN THE CLASSROOM The primary objective of the Instagram activity in SPAN301 was to increase student engagement with literature from various genres in the Hispanicspeaking world and create community in the classroom with meaningful posts and responses. See Appendix D for a description that can help students gauge what constitutes a substantive posting. In total, students posted ten photos on Instagram during the semester. Each post was worth 1%, so this activity made up 10% of the students’ final grade (see Appendix E for grading criteria). With an emphasis on community and engagement with authentic material, not linguistic accuracy, the Instagram activity produced positive results in both areas. An added benefit to students’ high engagement was that they paid more attention to their writing. These types of low-stakes, summative assessments allow students to thrive under the supervision of their instructor, who also participates in posts by asking questions and providing consistent feedback, which increases student motivation. Finally, this type of assessment gives instructors a better understanding of their students’ overall comprehension of the material, which is helpful when designing a lesson plan and discussion for that day’s material. By gauging students’ understanding of the text beforehand, the instructor can more effectively prepare appropriate tasks for class. Although Instagram is popular among today’s college students, some may feel hesitant to implement it in a class activity, especially if they think they have to use their personal handle. To avoid this resistance and for privacy reasons, it is recommended that students create another account for strictly academic purposes. If students create a new account, instructors can follow and view their content without reservations (see Appendix F for how to create an Instagram account, post content, and leave comments). Nevertheless, it is probably the first time that students interact socially with their teacher over social media, so there may be an adjustment period for both students and instructors for this type of communication. Along these same lines, incorporating social media apps into the classroom may be an opportune moment to teach students how to utilize technology

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safely and responsibly. College instructors can give students the option of making their accounts public or private. The latter option means that a student’s photos are only accessible to classmates and the instructor. This arrangement significantly reduces the risk of security threats. With this instruction, students develop digital literacy skills, which are fundamental for today’s students who juggle academic, professional, and personal digital endeavors. Part of the twenty-first-century skills map, technology literacy aims to transform students into “productive global citizens [who] use appropriate technologies when interpreting messages, interacting with others, and producing written, oral, and visual messages” (2011, 14). Students must learn how to communicate effectively and engage with others: Individuals should have the skills to communicate both orally and in writing in a variety of communicative situations and to monitor and adapt their own communication to the requirements of the situation. It is essential for students to perceive the applicability of linguistic competence not only in normal and regular contexts but also in a virtualized world so as to develop it in a more practical and functional way (Vázquez Cano 2012, 136).

With this in mind, before implementing an Instagram activity, instructors can organize an in-class exercise in which students create a list of guidelines for effective online communication, like avoiding the use of all caps, posting on a timely basis, and taking the time to read students’ responses thoroughly before responding. This type of activity empowers students to take control of their learning further. By embedding a digital tool into the classroom, instructors are not only teaching about it but employing it in an authentic way that will result in students more deeply understanding how to use it effectively outside of the classroom and in professional settings. Students may also benefit from detailed guidelines on how to post meaningful content: photographs and responses. See Appendix G at the end of the book for instructions to guide students through the task effectively and sample posts and responses for students to follow. Along these same lines, for many students, Instagram is intuitive; however, just because the majority of students are familiar with this platform does not necessarily mean that they all are. With this in mind, “social media education [should] be accompanied by social media in education” (Grosseck, 174). It could be helpful, therefore, to include a brief orientation session for those unfamiliar with the app or share detailed instructions with students on how to create an account and navigate the app (see Appendix F). Instructors should also be mindful that not all students may have access to a smartphone or computer and offer solutions that do not marginalize them from the online community (Nicholson and Galguera 2013, 9). For these

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cases, language departments may consider checking in with their IT departments on campus to see if there are extra phones or laptops that students can borrow. An alternative method is for students to share digital tools, using one phone or computer among various students to post photos and responses. Although this setup is not ideal, at the same time, this type of interaction leads to further student collaboration and target language use outside of the classroom. ADDITIONAL SOCIAL MEDIA IDEAS FOR TEACHING LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Using Instagram to interpret literature and create community is not limited to Intermediate-high or Advanced students. For students at the beginning stage of their language journey, Instagram is an effective tool to develop vocabulary, practice writing, and think critically about the primary text and the culture of the place where the story takes place. As mentioned in Chapter 1, students in SPAN102 at Amherst College read the short novel Los ojos de Carmen. In this story, Daniel, the protagonist, travels to Ecuador to improve his Spanish, spend time with extended family, and familiarize himself with his culture and its people. He is very excited and, like any photographer, takes a lot of photos during the trip. At the end of his stay, he submits a special photo to a photography contest and wins first prize. Since some undergraduates in SPAN102 may not have traveled outside of the United States, making it challenging for them to relate to the book’s theme, as an instructor, my goal was to create a personal connection between the plot and students’ lives. After every two chapters, I assigned a prompt to students that connected their daily lives at Amherst College to the storyline. In response to the prompt, students uploaded photos of objects, people, and places to their Instagram accounts. At the end of the semester, the class organized a photo contest similar to Daniel’s, and students voted for their favorite photos based on several categories. Below are two sample prompts related to the reading: Daniel describe el paisaje de Ecuador: ‘me sentí pequeñito en medio de la inmensidad de las montañas’ (p. 18). Sube una foto en tu cuenta de Instagram de un lugar o un paisaje que te haga sentir pequeño/a/e. / [Daniel describes the Ecuadorian landscape: ‘I felt small amidst the immense mountains’ (p. 18). Upload a photo of a place or landscape that makes you feel small.]

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‘La vida de Carmen también era difícil. Tan diferente a la de mis primos ecuatorianos que vivían en su burbuja de cristal. . . . Pensé que en cierta forma yo también vivía en una burbuja de cristal en Estados Unidos.’¿Amherst College es una burbuja? ¿Y los Estados Unidos? ¿Cómo? Sube una foto en tu cuenta de Instagram de algo que te haga sentir como si estuvieras viviendo dentro de una burbuja. / [‘Carmen’s life is also difficult. So different from that of my Ecuadorian cousins who live in a glass bubble.. . I thought in some way I also lived in a glass bubble in the United States.’ Is Amherst College a bubble? And the United States? How? Upload a photo on your Instagram account of something that makes you feel like you’re living in a bubble.]

Reading is essential at any language level, especially for Novice students eager to expand their vocabulary.6 Textbooks often present vocabulary in long lists with little context or very specific, technical terms that students do not use daily, so using words to discuss a book’s plot contributes to real language acquisition. In the survey distributed at the end of the semester, several SPAN102 students said they had not realized how much their vocabulary had grown, in part due to the fun nature of Instagram. Additionally, because the Instagram activity was low stakes (it only made up 10% of students’ final grade), they took more risks with their writing, playing around with different styles as one student noted in the post-course survey: “Instagram helped develop my language skills because it made me write sentences in [S]panish in a style that I do not usually.” Students tend to play it safe in more traditional papers or essays that make up a larger percentage of the final grade. Novice and Intermediate low students will rely on formulaic structures and simple sentences and limit themselves to the textbook vocabulary. Although it is crucial that students feel comfortable expressing themselves and, to a certain extent, using these structures helps solidify what they know in the target language, students often feel like they have reached a plateau. Activities that promote self-expression over linguistic accuracy push them to think outside of the box and take risks. When this occurs, they grow as writers, and consequently, their confidence rises. Similar to the assignment for SPAN301, the Instagram project for SPAN102 created a strong community. Since both sections of SPAN102 had fairly low enrollments (