 My name is Delia Mendez Montesinos. I'm here in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UT and I think most of you all know that this is a university with about 52,000 students and that's why we have a separate department for Spanish and Portuguese. The first thing that we considered when we were thinking of how to develop the program, we had had a heritage language program and it just had not worked seeing what the students needed to be successful in the advanced grammar and composition courses and in the literature courses. The literature was better. The advanced grammar and composition, I'm going to say the truth, it hurt my soul with my students' heritage because they didn't have the skills to have a true success. They arrived there to my class and of course those who were from SL students, they arrived and we could talk about time, fashion, connections, all this, very well. And my students, Herencia, we spoke in Chinese, they didn't understand me. And then the time for writing arrived, they were different, but it hurt me a lot because they were there, they wrote me, they wrote me, they wrote me, they wrote me without organization. The other students arrived, organized, the lack of orthographic, all that, and it hurt me, it hurt me a lot. Experience with students from Herencia? Yes. I'm from Brownsville, Texas, on the border by the sea. Good for us, good for us. I had worked, I mean, Porter High School is 99.5% Hispanic, if not 99.9% Hispanic. So I had a good inkling about what these heritage students could do and how high we could get them to perform because when I did the AP language in the second year that our program's AP Spanish language was there, we were brought out as exemplary by the college board. And it wasn't me, it's that we had the material. So I thought, we have the material here, we have to bring these students up to PAR so that they can perform well in the upper division courses. So we do have, we have a mix of heritage learners. We have a lot from the valley, we're using Spanish all the time. We have others who are Houston, a la mejor sea, Dallas, también, pero no hablan tanto como los de Herencia, del valle. Entonces hay una mezcla muy grande con ello. Lo primero que tuve que tomar en cuenta también eran los objetivos del departamento. Esto no era un curso aislado. Era dentro del programa de lenguas. Yo tenía que responder. Fui a tratar de hablar con los del departamento de inglés para ver cómo aquellos enseñaban inglés porque one thing that bothered me was English. Right, you teach it right. Spanish, we can get by with almost anything. No, we had to bring it up to level. I wanted my Spanish students to feel that they were taking a course that was as important as their composition, their physics, their calculus. Why give so much time to chemistry and not to Spanish? So I wanted them to take pride in what they were learning. So one of the, the, this is general for all our language program was that we have the focus on linguistic competence, on communication, interactualistic competence, which is good. Our students can speak, but can they write it well enough to communicate well? And very important for me was meta linguistic competence because that's what my heritage students needed when they got up to the advanced courses. That's where they were even weaker on. So I started thinking about, and I had a very good colleague, Lydia Huerta, who unfortunately was going to undertake all this with me and then went to New Mexico to the Western New Mexico University. So all of a sudden I was sort of left alone. But we did discuss it a great deal and she gave me her perspectives and I had my perspective. So then we, I started thinking, okay, how am I going to see these students? Are they going to be just exit level? And when they finished the introductory and the intermediate, is that where I'm going? Or do I want them to think of continuing? I want them to think of continuing in the language. To me, the purpose of taking my course is not to take the required, but engancharlos, a que sean minors, double majors or majors. Entonces, yo tenía que verlo de otra forma. Yo no quería la competencia nada más a un nivel de intermedio, sino más avanzado, engancharlo para que sigan tomando cursos. Entonces, nosotros tenemos lo que es 604, que es el curso, también les voy a decir una cosa. Nosotros, el programa de lenguas en el departamento español son tres cursos, tres semestres de cursos de seis horas. Los estudiantes están lunes, miércoles y viernes, dos horas. Y entonces, pensando que Texas, muchos estudiantes están familiarizados con español, por eso Afuera me decía hace un ratito, el nivel que pedís en el primer curso. Decidimos que lo que más necesitaban los estudiantes era el curso intermedio a través de más tiempo. Entonces, tenemos el 601, que es el curso elemental, todo allí, y es bastante, y luego tenemos el curso intermedio, este 610 y 611. Okay. Con español me dijeron, solo vas a tener dos semestres. No vas a tener los tres semestres. Vamos a tratar de convencer a nuestros hispanohablantes de que haya algo de tomar y lo escuchen un estudiante. No, I'm going to take this one because it's only two semestres and I'll finish my requirement. And after she finished the second semester she said, you know what, I'm going on for major, you know, but at least we got them in. That's another way to get them to come in. Okay. And so we saw that we wanted oral fluency, we wanted written literacy, and very important to me, cultural knowledge. And I think, especially in the 604 book, which is the first one, it's a great deal about finding their identity, where are my roots, where am I coming from? So there's a lot of cultural knowledge. In the 612, which is the second semester, the intermediate, it sort of comes back to bring them to the world today. But the first one is always experiencing who they are. Okay. And sort of trying to see where we could get them to achieve linguistic competence, interactual competence, and meta-linguistic competence. My courses are very structured. I decided what these students needed was language arts in Spanish. Not just a language acquisition course. The language was there. But they needed language arts. That's what they were missing. That was the big empty space, language arts. We teach language arts to our students who speak English from the very beginning. Why aren't we teaching language arts to our heritage speakers? This is what I felt. And once again, this is very personal, what I felt they needed. Okay. And I felt that progressively we would get to literacy, to oral skills, to oral skills, and develop and enhance. And to me, this is very important. They're critical thinking skills. It's not just acquiring, it's thinking as they're going along. So a lot of this is not just coming from me. It's an imposition from this university because I think, as Carl told you, it's trying to hold it up. Our standards very high. And I wanted our students to feel their Spanish is held at a very high standard. And I have high expectations for you. And you're going to meet my expectations and they do, they really, really do. And basically what I felt this would all do would augment their confidence in their Spanish. So once they felt strong in their language, then they would be confident in using their language. Okay. Once again, following our departmental, it's learner centered. It's an inductive methodology. We don't do it deductive, we start inductively, we go from this and why and then we come then once you're you're getting to all the practice deductive and inductive are the same thing, you get to the same place. But it's following the same methodology that we have in the language acquisition courses. And it would be to prompt the learner to tap into their implicit knowledge. It's there. Lo tienen. Lo tienen. I want to tap into what you have right there and progressively take that knowledge and guide them to hypothesize about both their oral and written language. So they take control of their language use. Analyzing. To me, that's very important. Students have to reach higher critical thinking skills. We need to teach them. I'm thinking of one student that I've had for two, the two sections. He was used to the teacher tells me this and this is what it is. The teacher tells me this. Yo quería que me diera. Develop inferential, interactional, presentational skills are all there. Become reacquainted with Spanish. So they're not just picking up Spanish. They're becoming reacquainted with their language but at a higher level. Avoid dependence on random assumptions and that's why it's constantly. Pero porque, porque I don't want you to do haphazard guessing. I want you to know why. That's the only way they can take control of their language. So you're saying this woman is very structured. Yes, I am. I'm sorry. And to make that implicit knowledge that they have right there, to make it explicit, bring it out and understand it totally. All right. We also integrate and contrast structures in English and Spanish. Why? Somo bilingües. Tenemos las dos estructuras. There's nothing wrong with tapping into my English knowledge. There's nothing wrong with tapping into my Spanish knowledge. This is the reality. We live in both languages. So make use of both of them as we can. And that way enrich their skills even in both languages. And like I always tell them, I was a high school Spanish, an English teacher also. And he'll see us again. No me pueden venir con cosas. And understand the interference. It's there. But why is that language interference there? It's natural. We're thinking in two languages. So basically it's understanding their experience with the language is what I was trying to get. Metalinguistic knowledge, like I said, very strong. Why? Because I want them to see there's more to that language that you're speaking. Look at how much is going into that phrase that you're saying. One of I remember one day when a student came and he said, I'm ma'am. So all of a sudden they feel empowered in their own language. And I want them that way they're able to interact with their language. Deciding which way we were going to go. What I was telling you, will we just do exit program or do we do continuing? How does it match up to our other languages? Our other language program, the SL language, because what if a student isn't able to take 604, where will they come in from our three semester program? Or if they can only take 604 into what course will they be going into? So there were a lot of things that we had to consider about that. Then Maria Luisa Chavadria who's back there with me. She's been working with me on 612 and Jose Lee Miners here worked with me phenomenally in 604. We also had the challenge that our school of education for bilingual teachers walked into one of our classes when they said they were coming to visit and I said that's fine. I didn't know why. They were trying to see if that course would work for their bilingual teachers to come in. They wanted to see what course. So because of their program they can only go into 612 in advance. So we also have that challenge of getting people going into 612 without going through our 604. I don't recommend it but I understand it and we work with them. The next thing and this is what you all might be dealing with. First how do we see how do we set up our program? What is our student population? What about the materials? Okay I went through a lot of materials. I could have pulled from different books but there wasn't one that fit our program. I'm thinking of our program and what we wanted to do. I also wanted because I'm very strong and there's something that would attract students so there would be different learning styles. The student who's there who's more mechanically is predisposed. The student who's there who is more artistically. So trying to bring in a little different things different activities that would attract different learning styles. Our varied student population to say you're a heritage speaker does not mean what you are. La gama es enorme. Once again very important to me was cultural integration. And so then we began with the design of the pilot materials. What did we basically do? We started off thinking from setting up the program. Once again I said it was a backward design. We started off thinking this will be not an exit program. It will be to continue the students on into upper division. We have two semesters. How will we do it? Okay one time that you present something to a student remember we are not they are not acquiring the language. They are often breaking bad habits and we know come on many of us have children. How many times do you have to tell or how many times did your parents have to tell you something? Did you get it the first time? No. Don't say so. We realize there had to be a lot of recycling in the program. Okay this is the second level book and I know Maria Luisa looking at for the first time because we worked with PDFs. The first time the first semester the first year of the 604 it was PDFs and working on different types of activities. That was fall and spring. In spring and that's when I was working on all the materials I was about 12 hours ahead of my students typing up working activities sending it to them through PDFs. They were wonderful. They worked really well with me. I had students who were in the 612 and at that time those students weren't coming in with the materials that we had used in 604. So I had to be doing sort of transitioning with those students and I sort of felt sorry for them because they weren't getting everything but it was I couldn't I was going bananas. I really was going bananas. They did. I mean I can assure you none of them are traumatized because of it and they did learn. They were really very receptive. They did learn. That was the first year. By fall of last year we did have the 604 in a book form so it was more of a book form. I can't believe it. I open up about the third or fourth page. A pesar de que yo creía que ya estaba todo corregido, aún me ayudó muchísimo y me dio muy buenas sugerencias. Entonces, tenemos dos niveles de libro. Este es el intermedio. Luego, más delante, les puedo subir lo otro. ¿Qué es lo que viene a hacer? Empiezo en este con un repaso preliminar. El repaso, básicamente, toma las nociones que vieron más importantes en el primer curso y las repite para que les refresque. Entonces, vemos cosas como combinando oraciones, la lectura, y luego las clases de palabras. Para que vean y se dan cuenta como pongo verbo, escribe. Y luego, en la siguiente página, van a buscar. Ellos pueden usar verb. That would be fine. I want them to relate. One of the things that we have difficulty with in any language program is that how strong is our student's English grammar. And so very often, we're talking about direct objects, indirect objects. We're talking about clauses. And it's sort of going over their heads. Like they said, and another student said, I've learned more English in this class than I ever learned throughout all high school. So we work with that in working with them. The orations, according to the speaker's attitude. The other thing I did, because this is with the editorial, they wanted to make a book in black and white. And I said, absolutely not. I'm sorry. These guys are visual. They're no longer on television in black and white, nor on computers in black and white. You have to attract them. And then they were willing to pass it. The L2, yes, yes, yes. If you notice, look at how much grammar is coming in here. Quite a lot of grammar. For them to come back. All of these have been seen in the first course, in some way. But it comes back here. And it comes back to recycle and recycle and recycle. Now, there are three great readings in each course. Because I think they have to learn to read in extension. But what they're going to bring are short things that we can use, that apply and take out the grammar or the writing from there. So they read a lot. One thing that seemed very interesting to me and it was that it took me back here again. Coming one day and listening to NPR, I was saying Educational Testing Service. One of the weakest points of our students nowadays is they cannot synthesize. They are unable to synthesize. They can't give you a summary. They can't. So I said that is true. And so once again, it was synthesizing. Por eso resumen. And this would be sort of what they did at the very beginning when they were doing combinando oraciones. Estacha la información que no sea necesaria para que luego pueda sintetizar, sacar la información. So it's going beyond just language. I mean, relearning their Spanish. It's bringing in other skills at the same times. Diagramming. Some of you are saying, oh my goodness. OK, we didn't do this in the first level. They were learning las clases de palabras. Now, it's a review for the types of words. It's actually seeing them in diagrams. And they get hooked on them because they're sort of like puzzles. So I take them through the whole steps of doing it. And they learn. And now they have a visual image of the sentence. It's not the tree diagram. I remember speaking to one of our linguistics professors, Jacqueline Toribi. And I said, Jacqueline, what would work best? She said, whichever one you want would be fine for us. But please do something because these students can't do it. And I really thought, to understand how a word goes, rather than in the whole sentence, but seeing it would be going through diagramming. So there are different things that we do. Coming back. Las formas personales. Para que sepan que es un verbo personal. No personal, impersonal. They have to know the terminology to be able to work with me in a 327, an advanced course. 327 C now. It's called an advanced course. So you teach them. And they start. They start speaking to you this way just recently. And one thing I'm going to try this coming semester. And I got this from, there was an advanced placement conference here in Austin just this past weekend. So I went to it. And there was a man, and it was for teaching physics. And he says, I teach them the three languages. I teach them 10th grade language, peer language, and professor language. So I tell them to explain the things to me like they would explain it to a 10 year old. Like they would explain it to their peer. And like they would, the professor would explain it. So it makes them think. So now as they're explaining, when did we really learn Spanish as teachers? When we started teaching it, right? That's when we really learned it. So what they are doing, they are teaching it through the three languages. So I'm going to try that out. But it's going back to the same thing. It's going over. They saw this again. Before we start, we have to go back. So all of that chapter, la tildes. Oh, la tildes. And this looks, Jose is probably looking at that and saying, that looks just like our 604 book. That's right. I took a few things exactly from their 604 book because I felt that way something will click. I have to make a connection to things they have done. Okay, they are very structured courses. They all finish, el aspecto verbal, all of that is there. I give them things also when they're writing, like in their writing right here, we were preparing for, they would write a newspaper article. So first of course, they had readings that were newspaper article. And they have reading comprehension. But their reading comprehension at this first one is right here. As they go into the next one, then I bring in grammar as part of the readings. ¿Cuál es el uso de la? ¿Cuál de las siguientes es una frase? And then I would give them two clauses and a phrase. Just to review. So it's incorporated there also. There's lots of color. And then there are these little green boxes. The little green boxes are sort of, let me drill it in. It's what they've been studying as they're going through. But once again, in putting it in different words. En el modo subjuntivo normalmente se usa en una cláusula porque así es como ya estamos hablando en el 612. Y es como vamos a continuar. Si el estudiante no entiende la terminología, se va a perder. ¿Qué es lo que les pasaba cuando me llegaba a mis cursos avanzados? I'm very much, I was brought up very much a purista. But I realize how important I've changed. I've changed. Nosotros era. O inglés o español. En casa, español, fuera puedes hablar inglés. No mezcles la lengua. That's not the reality. That's not the richness of our language. And that's why I tell them. I said, cuando se juntaron los españoles y los indígenas, los españoles tomaron palabras indígenas. Eso era una especie de indiglish o un span. No sé lo que era. Pero eso es el contacto entre culturas. Y como les digo, en un mundo como el nuestro, que es muy internacional, muy comunicado hoy en día, yo recuerdo la primera vez que oí a un argentino decirme, es que me friquió y yo me quedé ton, pero lo usan. Entonces es esa riqueza de nuestra experiencia. So basically this is what it's telling you. They read an article like this. This is about Sleepy Lagoon, que son los pachucos. Porque hablamos un poco de los pachucos en este capítulo. Los llevo a través de cómo escribir. Y luego ellos ya va en la parte de escritura en la comunidad. Entonces en este particularmente, ellos buscan algo histórico, algo que les interese de la comunidad que ellos quieran del mundo hispano. Y entonces buscan información y luego escriben un artículo periodístico. En el siguiente, en el capítulo dos, es una leyenda, que ellos toman una leyenda que quizá conozcan, pero le tienen que dar una vuelta al final. Le damos un ejemplo. La joven que bailó con el diablo, si acuerdan eso en el baile. Pero lo que pasa es que al final, cuando están bailando, bailando, bailando, el que cae muerto es el diablo. Y ella es la que se queda riendo y se mete en la grieta de la tierra. Entonces ellos tienen que buscar algo que les llame la atención, que pregunte a los abuelos, a sus mamás, algo así. Y que luego, ellos hagan su leyenda, pero que le den un giro. Y el último es un ensayo persuasivo. Ahí ya los estamos llevando hacia la escritura del ensayo persuasivo. Básicamente, vuelvo a decir, lo que nosotros buscamos fue algo que nuestro programa de lengua esté de acuerdo a la metodología y lo que pide el departamento. Es lo que a mí me regió. Y que empecé buscando de lo más alto, o sea, el famoso backward design. Going backward design, seeing where are we going to take these students, how am I going to get them there? Now let me see how I can space things out. And then going with things which I might think are important that you might say that really isn't necessary for my students. Linguistics, yes it comes in here. Linguistic transcription, we don't have that in 604, but here we see spelling through linguistic transcription because that's a little, it's fun. And they love that, eh? And I know that my heritage speakers like that because of my linguistics professors, they say they love linguistic transcriptions, let's use that. So then they see it, cazo con la C versus cazo, eh? So that they can see the difference in the words. So it's a whole bunch of little truquitos that we pick up that you might decide this is what I need for my students, this is what would work for my students. No, I think this will work better over here. And that's what we'll be doing today as we're working together, seeing what do, how can I plan a program that will be good for my department or for my school. And let's see how I can reach those goals. Okay, thank you very much.