Dedication, Author Information, Introduction, and Acknowledgements

I dedicate this textbook to my family for listening to my ideas and for their unwavering belief in my work.

I also dedicate this textbook to my students and colleagues at the  Pennsylvania State University in the Hazleton campus where I have had the privilege of teaching languages for ten years. Years of constant reassessments of lessons, exercises,  tests, projects, presentations, games, podcasts,  movies, and Voicethreads have led to the production of this textbook.

This textbook is designed for an Intermediate Spanish course and it is part of an initiative to create online material for students which is free and  accessible to everyone.  The author is the recipient of a Pennsylvania Grants for Open and Affordable Learning (PA GOAL) Grant, funded by the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER) and administered by the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc. (PALCI).   The textbook is comprised of a series of  task-based communicative activities that  focus on the form so that students can acquire acts of speech, vocabulary,  and grammar in context and create conversations related to the topics discussed.  The author has developed modified Integrated Performance Assessments or IPA (Adair-Hauck, B. et al. 2006 and Glisan et al. 2007)  and  Presentation, Attention, Co-Construction, Extension Models or PACE  (Adair-Hauck & Donato, 2002) from various stories, songs, cartoons, movies, articles, and other authentic materials that enhance understanding and use of language expressions in context. Please note that the IPA activities are modified.  This means that there are some adjustments made such as using the text of an audio work (song, poem, movie script) as  both the  Reading Interpretive Text and  the Authentic Recorded Text.  Students are asked to listen  and analyze the Reading text and to produce a presentational task based on it. By using IPA and PACE activities, which include listening and reading various songs, articles, stories, dialogues, and movies, students are exposed to speakers of various Spanish-speaking countries and learn to appreciate cultural and linguistic diversity. A final goal of this textbook is to foster equitable and inclusive learning by asking students to complete projects using their own experiences and knowledge in order to discuss  these topics in a manner that is relevant to them.

Adair-Hauck, B., & Donato, R. (2002). The PACE Model: A Story-Based Approach to Meaning and Form for Standards-Based Language Learning. The French Review, 76(2), 265-276. Retrieved July 5, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3132708

Adair-Hauck, B., Glisan, E. W., Koda, K., Swender, E. B., & Sandrock, P. (2006). The integrated performance assessment (IPA): Connecting assessment to instruction and learning. Foreign Language Annals, 39(3), 359-382. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2006.tb02894.x

Glisan, E.W., Uribe, D., & Adair-Hauck, B. (2007). Research on Integrated Performance Assessment at the Post-Secondary Level: Student Performance Across the Modes of Communication. The Canadian Modern Language Review / La revue canadienne des langues vivantes 64(1), 39-67. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/231767.

First, I would like to thank Galiana García, the graphic artist, who developed the cartoon strips for this textbook. The visual rendition of scenes such as the yogi, the lazy person, the crossing guard, and the courteous person link text to pictures which aid in understanding concepts in a clear and concise manner.

Second, the author is also indebted to the support of Dr. Elizabeth Wright, Director of Academic Affairs,  Penn State, Hazleton and of Michael Morrison, Director of Finance and Business, Penn State, Hazleton.  Thanks to Ana Enríquez, Scholarly Communications Outreach Librarian, Penn State at Univ. Park,  Brandy Karl, Copyright Officer and Affiliate Law Library Faculty, Penn State at Univ. Park, and  Dr. Bryan McGreary, Learning Design and Open Education Engagement Librarian, Penn State at University Park. for their guidance on what constitutes Fair Use practices.  The author acknowledges the encouragement of Dr. Gary Lawler, Chancellor of Penn State, Hazleton and Dr. Alfredo Jiménez, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Penn State, Hazleton.

This project would not have been possible without  the following  team of Instructional Designers and Instructional Production Specialists from Penn State University, at University Park:   Bradley Antill, Sara Davis, and  Wade Shumaker.  I am grateful to them for invaluable discussions, the creation of a stunning cover page, and extensive code writing to design and publish this online textbook in a format that is accessible to all and that is visually engaging and easy to navigate.

Finally, this project has been funded by a PA GOAL Grant,  received on August 2021.   The author wishes to thank the grant reviewers for their support.