USING SELF-INQUIRY AND SELF-ASSESSMENT IN ELEMENTARY SPANISH COURSES AS LANGUAGE LEARNING TOOLS

In general, most adult language learners find language learning a difficult and stressful task because learning a foreign language is emotionally challenging and fraught with ambiguity, especially during listening and speaking exercises. Some people are able to tolerate such level of ambiguity without feeling too much stress; others, however, experience a great deal of anxiety and it affects their performance. Horwitz [1] claims that listening comprehension tasks are frequently cited by learners as a source of anxiety because "many students claim to have little or no idea of what the teacher is saying in extended target language discourse" (p. 53). 1 Speaking activities also are a source of stress among novice learners who dread having to speak in Second Language (L2) classes. Hence the goals of this work: To examine L2 learners' expectations and attitudes with respect to speaking and listening in the L2 (e.g., too "fast", fear of speaking); To present ideas on how learners' expectations can be reformulated by self-inquiry in order to help learners to take charge of their own learning (e.g., learners reflect on their own learning strategies, etc.); To present activities and instruction that help novice learners to develop conversational skills (listening and speaking). This work, in particular, focuses on helping novice learners in Spanish elementary courses move from one-word utterances to larger units of discourse based on the self-inquiry activities (e.g., learners apply what they have learned upon reflection of what they know about dialogues, and how they occur within a particular context). The overall goal of this paper is to help learners cope with the anxiety and emotional challenges of learning an L2 by providing realistic expectations of the L2 learning process.