Grant Recipients
Annik Bilodeau, Spanish and Latin American Studies
Hannah Brubacher Kaethler (Research Assistant)
Description
Despite popular assumptions, reading鈥攁nd not speaking鈥攊s the skill advanced foreign language learners struggle with the most. As they progress from beginner to advanced levels, and text complexity increases, students experience more reading anxiety (RA).
This project blends second language learning and collaborative reading to assess whether
- the RA experienced by language learners when reading texts geared towards native speakers can be mitigated by working synchronously with a peer of a similar reading skill level, and
- if this lowered anxiety fosters a deeper reading, and improves text comprehension and test scores.
I propose to implement a 鈥渞eading buddy鈥 system in a third-year Spanish course. I will
- compare anxiety levels and reading comprehension scores (student pre- and post-questionnaires), and
- analyze the efficacy of this strategy, and its ability to engage, motivate, and help learners reach the desired learning outcomes (open-ended questions and test scores).
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