In my opinion, the Internet is, at the moment, a resource that complements the dynamics of the class: it is an easy to access, up to date and immediate source of authentic materials.

In addition, the Internet allows the teachers to make available to the students alternative methods of adding to their knowledge and this reinforces the learners' autonomy. In this process, the students become responsible for their learning process, and they come to understand that language learning is best facilitated in a context of authentic and real-life communication.

The Internet has a number of practical uses: one can purchase everyday objects (food, clothes...) or plane or train tickets; one can listen to the radio or choose a film to see in a cinema; there are new possibilities to communicate and provide access to information that is useful and appropriate to peoples’ lives. The possibilities are endless, and all these activities can be done in a second language in the real world.

Within the world of Spanish as a Second Language, there is a large amount of linguistic and cultural information, which has not been adapted or revised by teachers. There are also great quantities of learning materials that have been published individually or as a didactic sequence. These materials can support planned and guided learning, but it is important to know when it is suitable to suggest to the students to undertake them. There is a need to consider this carefully and also to evaluate the quality of the material and be aware of its characteristics.

During this course, I have analysed many Internet sites dedicated to the learning of the Spanish language, and I have to say that most of them keep interaction at a very simple level. Most of the authors of these pages use the web as a tool to publish material that should be printed instead of being available online. And it is very important to remember that the first principle in CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) is not to publish online anything that could be publish in a traditional means without loosing any of its functionality. Normally these pages use the web as a delivery tool, and consequently, the student is understood as a passive learner.

After reflecting on this fact, and having in mind my dissertation for this Masters, I decided to take on a project that would address these issues. In order to be consistent with the kind of language teaching I believe in, I had to look for a real communicative context in which to develop my learning activities.

For my dissertation, I intend to work in collaboration with Christine Appel, lecturer of Spanish in SP140, a language module taught across different faculties in DCU. This class consists of Post-leaving Certificate students with a previous knowledge of Spanish but, in general, there are ranges of different levels in the class.

In that module, language learning happens in the context of a task-based project via e-mail. The Irish students in this class have to complete two tasks during the semester in collaboration with their Spanish peers. This has been a success as the students communicated and endeavored to give and produce relevant information in their emails and final reports. However, the focus on grammar was lacking, and they made little use of the photocopied material given to them as a support of the course.

Therefore, in my dissertation I intend to develop, evaluate and redesign a web site conceived to support and facilitate language learning in this specific situation and for two very definite tasks. I want to investigate if grammar, the ´boring´ component of language learning for most students, can be designed in an attractive, motivating and effective way that results in improvements in the students’ use of grammar. In courses online, grammar is normally delivered using online resources that actually resemble traditional grammar books. I intent to develop new materials to teach Spanish grammar, making full use of what the Web has to offer in order to create enjoyable and motivating contexts in which to learn grammar on-line.

My project for the 'Network Information Management' module consists of developing learning material that will be available for the students in order to complete their first task in the SP140 module.

With this project I intend to:

• Recognize when the Internet complements the traditional resources in the class.
• To determine which are the conditions that an online language learning activity must fulfill to justify it being delivered on-line rather than through more traditional formats.

New technologies also create the possibility of students interacting with his or her peers in other locations.

In relation to information, teachers intervene in the learning process not as the owners of the content, but as the designers of instruction situations. They are consultants that help the students in the election of an appropriate route for their learning process. This is a flexible and modern model, where information can be obtained from large databases and may be shared with other students.

Taking this into consideration, during the conception of my project, I had to evaluate the quality of the interactions in the materials, the relevance of animation to content and the level of difficulty for students in using the tool. In order to avoid repetition in the dynamics of the activities it was necessary to assess the variety in the typology of the activities.

The importance of the learning strategies grows in accordance with the conviction that a valuable knowledge comes from continuous training. In the new learning contexts, it is important to cater for different models of learning. In that respect, the added value of activities similar to the ones I have developed comes from the autonomy and the flexibility that can be part of the learning process.

I think that new approaches to learning languages in technological environments have to be individualization, diversity and decentralization. These basic aspects can be also traced in the constructivist learning theories. The learning process is addressed by responding to the needs of an individual learner. The group consists of individuals and the teacher has to bring tasks to the class that account for that diversity.

Materials are very important in the development of the teaching-learning process. The traditional situation is to follow a textbook. The contribution of multimedia materials to the process of building meanings leads to more effective retention.

The navigation through hypermedia materials makes the construction of personalized itineraries easier.

The design of materials will be more relevant and appropriate if it includes the results of the collaboration with other students. Knowledge is not only built through the process of available information, but through the exchange of information with other students. This is one of the principles in the curricula of the SP140 module, where students work in pairs to produce the reports that will be evaluated by their respective teachers in Ireland and Spain. I tried to bear this in mind when I was developing the materials for the Irish students in DCU.

How can my materials contribute to the teaching of Spanish in the SP140 module? There are two different perspectives from which I can support what I have done. One relates to my belief in a specific teaching method: the communicative approach to teaching; the second comes from the learning theories that support my action research.

When designing what I believe is effective teaching and training materials, it is very important to establish suitable learning goals and objectives linked to the course curricula, because, at the end of the day, what a teacher wants is to facilitate a learning process that is going to be appreciated by the students. In this particular case, I worked with the tutor of the course in order to select a relevant grammar point that students will need to revise and study if they are to pass the continuous evaluation that the tutor has set out for them. This grammar point focused on the study and revision of two main past tenses in Spanish: the "imperfect" and the "indefinite". These tenses present difficulties to English speaking students because both of them are equivalent to only one tense in English: the "simple past".

My teaching practice is based in the belief that goals and content must be consistent with decisions about methodology and evaluation. The approach of the education theory in relation to curricula, understood as a link between theory and practice in teaching, must be included in language teaching. In the traditional teaching method, decisions were made ignoring the intervention of the students. A curriculum was set without taken into account the people involved in that process. But at the moment, a curriculum is based in solving the problems that appear in the class, and involves teachers and students.

The new orientation of language courses corresponds to a teaching practice that follows these trends:

• Use of the language with communicative purposes;
• Emphasis in natural processes of learning;
• Importance of the individual variables in the learning process;
• Teaching centred in the student;
• Development of the learner's autonomy

This constructivist theory is founded on the study of cognition, and one of its principles is that learning has to be an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts starting from their current or past knowledge: students always build on something. Cognitive structures provide meaningful and organisational experiences that allow the student to go beyond the information that has been given.

According to Bruner, the teacher must encourage students to construct hypotheses, make decisions and discover principles by themselves. In this teaching context, the instructor's task is to adapt the information to be learned into an adequate format to the student's current state of understanding and organise it in a way so that the learner is continually building on what they already know.

Bruner says that an education theory should take these aspects into account:

• The most effective sequence in which the material has to be presented;
• The ways in which a certain body of knowledge can be structured so that the student can most easily assimilate it.

I initially had different ideas concerning how the material should be structured. For example, should a linear structure be maintained? The problem with such an approach is that material will be used very differently by different learners, and will be used differently by the same student at different times. A linear structure may be more desirable for students going through a specific content for the first time. However, this may be inappropriate for students revising the material, which is in fact the case with the students in the SP140 module. In the end, I decided it would be more appropriate to allow the students to navigate the site with total freedom. I hope that by allowing this, students are not confused and can appreciate the consistency of the original structure. At the moment the site contains five web pages.

In these five pages, content is structured as follows:

4 and 5: Imperfecto e Indefinido: these are similar pages with different contents in which I intend to explain to the student how the forms of these tenses are built. In order to do that, I have developed six flash movies because I think that, in this case, animation can replicate the exact process that the student has to follow in order to form the tenses correctly.

Apart from Bruner's theory, while designing these pages I had in mind other theories and pedagogical practices.

1. As Fahy states, it is important to hold the students’ attention so they can learn principles. This is what I tried to do with the use of Flash. I am aware of the fact that animated movies are powerful in attracting and holding attention, and therefore the student should not be required to read while watching an animation. But I do not intend that the students read the screen, but instead, I want them to capture a process.
2. In designing materials, it is important to arrange information in a way that does not present a threat for the student with long texts that are difficult to read on screen.

3. I am convinced that the more students can manipulate materials, the more they

learn. For example, the use of pictures, exercises arranged like puzzled games,

cards and phisically movable material are beneficial in the traditional class. This

gives the student a sense of control that derives is satisfactory and enjoyable for

the student. I have tried to duplicate this in the material I designed, although I am

aware of the technical limitations I have when putting in practise all this.

I still have not started to collect data, but I am planning to get feedback on students' responses. I will ask them to evaluate the web site through a survey, and keep records of their opinions.

I also want to include other colleagues in the evaluation and improvement of the pages. I will ask some of my colleagues to evaluate the web site, but I do not plan to give them a survey. I am more interested in keeping a record of their impression as teachers. Do they think this can be useful as support material for their courses?

The opinion of the lecturer of the SP140 module will be also very important. She will keep records of the interactions of her students with their Spanish counterparts, and will be able to observe the progress that is being made by the students.

At the end of my project I expect to be able to produce evidence that supports the importance of linking learning theories with technologies when creating materials for the web. There has to be a pedagogical reason that justifies every choice of a designing tool when a teacher creates learning materials. Obviously I expect the students will find the material useful and relevant. I also expect the students to approach these materials with the conviction that the material is a powerful tool which will increase their autonomy as learners.

Bruner, J., 1966: Toward a theory of instruction. Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Eklund J. "Cognitive Models for Structuring Hypermedia and Implications for learning from the World-Wide Web". [online] Available on: http://www.scu.edu.au/sponsored/ausweb/ausweb95/papers/hypertext/eklund/index.html. [Accessed on 24^rth December 2001].

Warshauer, M., 1996: "Computer assisted language learning: An introduction". In S. Fotos (ed.), Multimedia language teaching, 3-20. Tokyo: Logos International.