De garder a bajtin: la communicacion mediada por ordenador y su impacto en la clase de lenguas

Abstract

This thesis describes an action research project that was carried out with first semester students of Spanish at the University of Calgary to evaluate the impact of a pedagogical innovation on their motivation and attitudes towards Spanish speakers and the Spanish language. The study combines the theories of attitudes and motivation developed by social psychologist R.C. Gardner with the descriptions oflanguage and language acquisition proposed by Russian linguist and literary critic Mikhail M. Bakhtin. We propose that projects of intercultural contact through Computer Mediated Communication in the language classroom can not only improve students' attitudes and motivation, but also allow them to experience characteristics of language that are usually absent in the classroom setting. Among these features are language heteroglossia, the importance of the communicative utterance, and the impact that the other, or the potential audience, has on the utterance.