ChatGPT employs a deep learning (DL) model constructed using artificial neural networks and designed to analyze input data and extract increasingly complex features (Hu and Buehler 2023). Its chatbot interface makes it easy to use, requiring just a prompt to generate a response from the model. It is capable of producing fluent text in multiple…

In an increasingly interconnected world that relies on social awareness and tolerance, developing students' cultural competence is now more vital than ever. Despite its importance, language educators may find the teaching of culture particularly challenging as it may seem to lack curricular structure and be difficult to evaluate. For these…

With postcards, addressing culture in the L2 classroom follows an "if-these-walls-could-talk" design by telling the story of what "those walls" might say. A postcards approach is shown to enrich our students' cultural understanding. In many cases, it enhances their desire to experience the target culture on their own. Postcards…

Digital narratives have been used to promote target language reading and writing as part of instructed second language teaching. These texts can help break the monotony of more traditional print material and get learners closer to the multimodal practices that are part of their everyday written interactions, including elements such as video,…

The all-encompassing term "Medical Spanish" references the Spanish used by healthcare professionals. Medical Spanish courses have gained traction as the Spanish-speaking population in the U.S. continues to grow. Consequently, demand for courses in Medical Spanish and other areas of Spanish for Specific Purposes (SSP), a subfield of…

Interacting with native speakers in various types of virtual exchanges is becoming increasingly accessible for language learners and teachers around the world. The present study examined the experiences of beginning and intermediate level learners of Spanish in the United States as they interacted weekly with native Spanish speakers over the…

This longitudinal study tracked ten L1 English-speaking learners' acquisition of Spanish voiceless stops /ptk/ by measuring their voice onset time (VOT) over an academic year in two distinct contexts of learning. Living in a Spanish-speaking dorm, participants in the experimental group experienced a "domestic partial-immersion," in which…

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought questions of empathy in the modern world to the forefront of daily life. Although a natural human response, empathy can be cultivated and even taught. Recent research on the links between reading and empathy present possibilities for world language educators to integrate the purposeful study of literature with the…

Over the last several years, faculty have engaged students and community members in a series of collaborative projects with the goal of addressing complex issues such as identity, language, and belonging. I posit that the work we have been doing constitutes a broader innovative humanities project centered on cultural studies. To demonstrate as…

The paper discusses the interpretation of adversative clauses introduced by "pero" and concessive clauses introduced by "aunque" in Spanish. Specifically, the discussion centers around structures that exhibit the forms: (i) "A, pero B," (ii) "A, aunque B-INDICATIVE," and (iii) "A, aunque…

Employing a modified version of an exhibit template for course integration (Beckman 2012), Sylvia López designed museum projects for an elective Spanish course on health that is open to students at the high-intermediate level and above. The course's aims are manifold: to build students' vocabulary, to discuss cultural aspects affecting health, and…

The present study provides empirical data measuring the effects of a flipped and blended course design for beginning-level Spanish on the four skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening, compared to a control group following a traditional present-practice-produce instructional format. The study provides a template for the successful…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-powered machine translation bring opportunities and challenges for L2 educators and students. Most recently, the emergence of AI-based chatbots, such as ChatGPT, has led to calls for a revision of traditional teaching methods to prioritize reflective reasoning and critical thinking. This article studies the…

Studies on the application of service-learning with an emphasis on heritage learners are still emerging. Using a critical service-learning approach, I describe how the integration of a service-learning project showed heritage learners of Spanish the need for people with their bilingual abilities. Specifically, I examine the impact of…

The current study contributes to the argument regarding whether L2 learners up to advanced levels make agreement errors on grammatical gender. It reports gender agreement accuracy on a written Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) and an Elicited Oral Production Task (PDT) on known nouns assigned the correct gender by participants on a vocabulary…