International Educator - March/April 2013 - S6

foreign language student may only talk for seven minutes a week. If

tion, give positive feedback, or make assessments for a formal

you have 20 students and you’re meeting twice a week, how many

oral quiz.”

minutes of utterance are you going to get?”
The Foreign Language Instructional Center is a Title III program
to expand the number of U.S. students who speak a critical language,

She says the system has been useful in gauging where students
are in their learning process and judging whether the pace of a class
is working for that individual group.

especially those in need. It has a three-pronged mission: to work on

“You find out that even though you might have some native

campus to grow language-learning opportunities for students and

speakers in the class, they don’t seem to be ready for their midterm

faculty, to work in the surrounding community, and to work in K–12

and it’s time to go back and review,” she says. “There are so many pos-

schools nearby that offer little to no language education.

sibilities, but at the end of the day, you get to have students talking

“The first thing Title III did was establish our state-of-the-art

much more than they would with just a live instructor in the room.”

classroom,” says Gharbi. It’s based on Sony Virtuoso Major instruc-

UMES’s classroom seats 20 students and isn’t used for all lan-

tional software, which links with Rosetta Stone and other high-tech

guage classes. “We’re juggling the number of hours in a week,” says

learning tools to get students both listening and speaking more.

Gharbi. “We give priority to critical-need classes.” It’s been used for

“We can have 20 students talking at once,” says Gharbi.

everything from Chinese to Russian to Haitian Creole.

“They’re all talking into headsets and they can be saying any-

Talking also takes center stage at classes at State University of

thing—working with Rosetta Stone, using prompts from a lesson

New York at New Paltz, where instructor Sarah Elia says technology

you’ve given them, reacting to a newspaper you’ve pulled up from

plays a key role.

Saudi Arabia, talking about poetry, or working in dialogue groups.

“We use cell phones a lot,” she says. “Most students have their

While they’re talking, the instructor can listen to them one by one

smartphones in the classroom, and our students tend to be older and

and give instant feedback. The instructor can correct pronuncia-

more mature. We can trust that they’re on task with what they’re

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