AVE + Synchronous online classes = the best way to learn Spanish
For some months now, Mynglehas been offering a very special package: the combination of a self study course of Spanish called AVE and Online classes. Here I would like to tell you more about this great combination.
The AVE or Virtual Aula of Spanish (Aula Virtual de Español in Spanish) is a didactic platform created by Instituto Cervantes which offers language courses at A1 to C1 level for learning Spanish on the Internet.
As Instituto Cervantes describes them, the AVE courses:
‘follow the curriculum of Cervantes Institute and consist of didactic multimedia materials, Internet communication tools and an automatic follow-up system. The environment allows its users to participate in different work groups and rely on support provided by a tutor who guides their learning process.’
These courses have the advantage that they provide the students with autonomy and the possibility to work at their own pace: the activities included in the materials can be automatically corrected on the instant; they can be repeated; the student can consult the correct answers and can even do the tests on their own which are then automatically corrected.
A very important part of AVE is the role of the tutor. It is the tutor’s responsibility to make sure the students feel very committed and valued during the course since the aforementioned autonomy might turn out to be counterproductive if the tutor does not fulfill his/her task correctly.
The AVE and Online classes’ combination promotes two very important aspects of language learning: the development of written and oral expression. First, written expression is a productive and creative skill so it cannot be corrected automatically; this means that the student does not receive any correction or feedback on the written expression activities suggested by AVE. In the combination suggested, it is the tutor who corrects the texts using a word processor program which allows for making comments and tracking the changes and he/she sends them back to the student via email. Second, synchronous online classes can be especially useful in the case of oral expression and interaction since the student-teacher interaction in the classes provides oral practice. The teacher can use certain course activities or he/she can create, on the basis of each course topic, activities to develop this skill further.
To sum up, as an online teacher of Spanish and tutor in AVE I strongly recommend this combination because it combines the best from each type of learning. On the one hand, the AVE course is a self study course where students work on their own, they can follow their progress as AVE has self evaluation activities, they can access the platform and work whenever they want and from wherever they want and they also have a tutor, who guides them and helps them during the whole process. On the other hand, the online classes give the opportunity to have sessions with their tutor/teacher regularly, solve doubts, practice the aspects they find most difficult and work on the oral and writing expression always according to what they have worked in the AVE.
