Newcastle University

Dr Nuria Lopez has been awarded the EU Language Label 2013 for her dictionary project with the Business Spanish modules. Nuria reported back from the award ceremony at the EU commission in Westminster in September:

"On Thursday 26 September I attended the European Language Label Award ceremony at the EU Commission offices in Westminster, London. The ceremony was hosted by Claire Dugard and Neil Hillman, from CILT, and was attended by representatives from the Spanish, French and Italian consulates and the Goethe Institut.

"There were inspiring presentations from some of the winning projects, such as “Using Film to Enhance the KS4 Curriculum” from Millais and Imberhorn Schools in the South East (students performed a Jeremy Kyle-style show in German!) and “Italian Bi-lingual Classes” from St Aloysius’ College Junior School in Glasgow (we saw a video of children performing a play in Italian, with a script written by themselves).

"Steven Fawkes, chair of the UK judging and advisory panel for the European Language Label 2013, said: 'This year’s criteria from the EU Commission asked us to look for innovation, effectiveness and replicability, alongside the label's principles of inspiration and celebration, which we hope will continue to encourage motivational thinking in future years.'

"Ann Swarbrick, Languages Education Lead for Initial Teacher Training at the CfBT Education Trust, closed the ceremony on a very positive note: encouraging the young people present to continue with their language learning and celebrating the success of a wide range of language projects from different contexts and different parts of the UK."

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And here is how the project Writing your own Spanish Dictionary Project (Business Spanish modules) was structured in different phases:

First phase (January-September 2012)

The aim of the first phase was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Write Your Own Spanish Dictionary task in terms of its impact on vocabulary acquisition and the learners’ approach to vocabulary learning.

What does the task consist of?

Students choose words and prepare entries to create their own dictionary. Words are chosen from different sources: learned in class or when doing their homework, from the textbook, handouts, videos, etc.

For each word students must prepare an entry containing the following information:

Spanish word (llevar)

English translation (to deal with, to see to, to be in charge of)

Grammar information (regular verb)

Sample sentence using the word (Marta trabaja en el Departamento de Personal y lleva las nóminas de los trabajadores.)

Synonym/Antonym (Syn: encargarse de, ser responsable de)

Other information, such as related words, image, etc. (Other meanings of "llevar" are "to wear", "to bring", "to carry")

This is a collaborative task. Students not only share their entries, but they also complete, improve or modify entries submitted by other students.

I check all contributions to ensure that the information is accurate and make suggestions to improve the content; however, I do not choose or add words to the dictionary myself.

Summary of results obtained in the first phase (through vocabulary tests, questionnaires and interviews)

Has this task improved students’ vocabulary acquisition? The Dictionary task enhanced vocabulary acquisition for 73% of students. Results also show that both passive and active knowledge of vocabulary were enhanced.

Has this task had any impact on the students’ approach to vocabulary learning, both in terms of the time spent learning vocabulary and the techniques used to do so? What was their perceived usefulness of the task? All students thought that the task had been useful and 93% of them claimed they intended to devote more time and to apply new techniques for vocabulary learning.

What was the learners’ opinion about the collaborative aspect of this task? Have learners enjoyed this task? Did they think it should be introduced in their Spanish course? 93% of students thought they had benefited from working in a group. Also, most of them enjoyed the task and said it should be introduced permanently in their course. These were some of the students’ comments: "Rewarding, as combination of the group’s work produce more vocab than just an individual could", "Different people provide alternative sources of words", "Keeping track of Spanish. As we only have 3 hours seminar per week, doing the task helped me memorise the Spanish", "Helps you recap key words at the end of each session and provides a good work database", "It is very beneficial as by the end we will all have a good amount of vocab to learn and revise for the exam"

Second phase (October 2012-ongoing)

The aim of the second phase was to develop the project further taking into account the results obtained in the first phase. The following changes have been introduced: the dictionary is now organised following the textbook units (in topics), the task is now being carried out through a wiki, and follow-up activities have been designed to practice the dictionary vocabulary further. The organisation/use of the wiki and the follow-up activities have been evaluated by students at the end of Semester 2. Results of this evaluation have not been analysed yet, but depending on what they reveal, appropriate changes will be introduced in 2013-2014.