An area of active change in methodology is the use of communication activities in the teaching of a foreign language¹¹². With this focus on communication as a route for language learning has come a reevaluation of the role of grammar instruction. Most new textbooks now offer communication-focused activities as well as traditional grammar-focused exercises. Communication activities ask the student to convey information, ideas, opinions, to participate in a game, to role-play, or to hear and discuss information about the speakers of the target language. Grammar exercises offer the opportunity to hear and produce specific forms and structures of the target language. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a framework for describing methodological trends in current beginning level Spanish texts for colleges and universities¹¹³. The framework consists of five parameters:

1. communication activities/grammar exercises
2. contextualization/non-contextualization
3. meaningful/role
4. open/closed (divergent/convergent)
5. interactive/non-interactive

Communication activities in current texts vary greatly in both form and content. A written text (an ad, a poem, a short story, a cultural note, etc.) can serve as a basis for a «meaning-focused» activity. A communication activity is frequently based on an oral text such as «teacher-talk» input, a recorded text (cassette), or a video recording (a new broadcast, a variety show, a music video, etc.) Many instructors think of «role-playing» as the prototypical communication activity. Some recent texts include role-playing as the primary use of printed dialogues. Many texts now include specific ideas for situations, sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish.

For the purpose of this paper I did not attempt to analyze and classify oral or written texts and the activities based on them. I classified any other activity as «communication-focused» when it did not appear to be written specifically to practice a particular set of forms or structures. The following are typical examples of communication activities that were easy to classify. In the following communication activity taken from Dímelo Tú, p. 114, the students are given responses and have to figure out what previously had been said to obtain this response.

In the following communication activity from En directo, p. 162, students are asked to tell their favorite subjects and in addition to name the subjects they will have to study whether they like them or not.

In the above two examples there is no focus on a particular grammar point. In the following example, taken from Dos mundos, pp. 278-79, the classification as an activity or an exercise is more difficult.

In this activity the semantic focus is on the childhood activities of certain famous people. The only way to talk about this topic in Spanish is to use imperfect verb forms. However, since the use of the imperfect seems secondary to the main focus, which is talking about childhood activities, I have classified this as a communication activity.

In contrast to the above activity, I have classified the following exercise from Encuentros, p. 177, as a grammar-focused exercise since its intent was to provide the opportunity to practice the production of the forms of the verb preferir. However, the context of the exercise lends itself well to communication, and other instructors might have justifiably classified it as a communication activity.

In most cases it is easy to identify a grammar exercise since the grammar focus is usually made explicit by the authors. In the following grammar exercise from En contacto, p. 132, the students are asked to focus on the production of the verb tener in the structure tener que + infinitive.

A contextualized activity/exercise has a real or imaginary context attached. Communication activities, by their very nature are normally contextualized. The following grammar exercise taken from Entradas, p. 251, is contextualized because each item is part of a larger context that forms a coherent narrative.

Sometimes the context for an activity or exercise is believable, and other times it is clearly imaginary. In the following contextualized grammar exercise on negative expressions taken from Poco a Poco, p. 154, there is indeed a context in which the characters are created for this exercise alone. Notice also that the items in the exercise do not go together semantically as well as in the previous example.

Non-contextualized exercises were commonly used in texts in the grammar-translation and audiolingual traditions. In a non-contextualized exercise the individual sentences usually have no semantic or pragmatic relationship

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to each other. Often words in the exercise items, especially pronouns, have no referents. For example, note that in the following grammar exercise taken from Foundation Course in Spanish, p. 123, there is no context given, the items in the exercise are unrelated to each other, and the pronouns do not have referents.

In this paper I will take a «meaningful» activity/exercise to be one that cannot be completed if the student does not understand the meaning of the words in the activity/exercise. A «rote» activity/exercise can be successfully completed without understanding the meaning of many (or even most) of the words in the item. The following grammar exercise from Descubrir y Crear, p. 89, is meaningful since the students cannot complete the phrases unless they understand their meaning.

The next exercise, also taken from Descubrir y Crear, p. 89, is classified as rote since it is entirely possible to do the noun to pronoun transformation correctly without knowing what the sentences (or words) mean.

An «open» activity/exercise permits the student to choose a response that is not known in advance by the instructor. A «closed» activity/exercise has specific answers known in advance by the instructor. Communication activities tend, by their very nature, to be open, but they can be closed. The following communication activity taken from Puntos de Partida, p. 246, is typical in that it allows for several responses.

The following communication activity, also taken from Puntos de Partida, p. 249, is a typical «problem-solving» activity. The focus of the activity is on meaning, not grammar and so it is classified as a communication activity. However, the answers are known in advance to the instructor and it is a closed activity.

A personalized interview is a prototypical open activity since the information to be provided is presumably known only to the student.

Grammar exercises in traditional texts were usually closed. However, the trend today is to have a balance of open and closed exercises. The following open grammar exercise taken from Dicho y Hecho, p. 192, suggests specifically that students create their own responses.

The following grammar exercise, also taken from Dicho y Hecho, p. 199, is a typical closed grammar exercise.

It should not be thought that only open activities/exercises are valuable. Closed exercises can be used by the students as verification or self-correcting exercises, and for that reason are a very useful tool for the instructor and the students.

The most recent trend in foreign language instruction is toward the use of «pair/group» activities in the foreign language class. I consider an activity/exercise to be «interactive» if it was formated specifically to be done orally by two students working together, or if its format lends itself easily to interactive work. The following grammar exercise from Wilkins, Español a lo vivo, p. 182, is set up to be done interactively.

One way to study trends in the teaching of grammar in beginning Spanish texts is to select a single text and compare the approach used through various editions of the same text. I have chosen for analysis Zenia Sachs Da Silva's text, Beginning Spanish: A Concept Approach for analysis. There are six editions of A Concept Approach: the text spans the years from 1963 to 1987. In addition, the text reflects relatively well most of the trends in language teaching in those years. In the following table are the proportion of activity/exercise types based on the five parameters listed in the analytic framework described above.

The first edition of A Concept Approach was published in 1963 and reflects the very conservative tradition of the «grammar-translation» approach. As far as I can tell, this first edition was uninfluenced by the audiolingual revolution in progress at that time. A typical chapter (Lección Séptima and Octava) consists of (I) pronunciation explanation, (II) along dialogue followed by questions, (III) grammar explanations + exercises, (IV) a vocabulary list followed by personalized/general questions. Twelve of the twenty-two exercises in the two chapters examined ask for translation from English to Spanish. Here is a typical translation exercise from this first edition, p. 92.

The rest of the grammar exercises in the first edition are similar to the following one and are entirely non-contextualized, rote, closed and non-interactive (p. 89).

Only the personalized questions based on a vocabulary list could be considered to be a communication activity that in addition is contextualized, meaningful, open, and interactive (p. 95).

The second edition of A Concept Approach was published in 1968 and apparently was influenced by the audiolingual revolution only to the extent that the number of translation exercises was reduced from over one-half of the total in the first edition to about one-third in this second edition. There are no pattern drills in this edition, nor do they ever appear in the A Concept Approach texts. The reduction of translation exercises, on the other hand, continues through the other editions until translation no longer plays any role at all in the grammar exercises¹¹⁴.

The table shows a significant increase in the number of grammar activities that can be considered to be meaningful, open, or interactive. Although the following exercise (p. 111) would not be used by many text writers today, it is clearly a significant improvement over the ones used in the first edition.

The third edition, published in 1973, shows the influence of the «cognitive» approach popular in those years. The cognitive approach is reflected in the dramatic increase in the number of «meaningful» grammar exercises. The following exercise from the third edition is not rote since it cannot be done unless the student understands the meaning of the phrases in the two columns (p. 120).

The major change in the fourth edition (1978) is the increased use of contextualization. Although A Concept Approach never adopts the policy of contextualization for all activities and exercises that most new texts now use, almost one-half of the exercises have been contextualized by the fourth edition. In the following example (p. 146) the contextualization is created by the personalization of the questions.

Nevertheless even the fourth edition still clings to the use of many non-contextualized, rote, closed grammar exercises like the following one, p. 133.

The fifth edition (1983) is nothing short of revolutionary. Table One shows that use of communication activities increases dramatically from only about one-quarter in the fourth edition to almost one-half of the total in the fifth edition. Contextualized, meaningful, open activities/exercises all increase and become the dominant exercise types. Only the number of interactive exercises lags behind.

The sixth edition (1987) completes the revolution started in the fifth edition. Activities comprise a full 60% of the total, which, as we shall see in the following section, is in line with other texts and with recent methodological trends. Contextualized, meaningful, and open exercises are now the majority.

Not all texts have reflected the same trends as A Concept Approach. The first edition of ¿Habla español?, for example, was published in 1976 and the fourth edition appeared in 1989. Here is a comparison of the use of the activity/exercise types in the two editions:

In 1976, unlike in A Concept Approach, the authors of ¿Habla español? were influenced by the audio-lingual approach. Almost one-third of the exercises consist of audiolingual pattern drills. In contrast, there are no pattern drills in the most recent edition of ¿Habla español? The greatest change is in the category of contextualization. As in other texts, most of the activities and exercises in ¿Habla español? are now contextualized. The more important change, however, is the increase in the number of meaningful exercises. Meaningful exercises are now the dominant tone of the latest edition. However, note that ¿Habla español? is still a relatively conservative text with a heavy grammar component. The proportion of grammar exercises to communicate activities has held steady at slightly more than two-thirds. In addition, the authors have not increased the number of open and/or interactive exercises.

In this section I use the parameters from the framework described in section I to analyze activities and exercises used in current beginning Spanish texts. The data are based on an analysis of the activities/exercises of sixteen college level and five high school level texts¹¹⁵. Each activity/exercise was classified according to the five parameters and the results tabulated¹¹⁶. I will report only general trends, because the specific differences in percentages are not likely to be significant¹¹⁷. The following table gives the mean (in percent) for each factor analyzed for the seventeen college level texts. The absolute range consists of the highest and lowest scores for any single text. The average range is an arbitrary range of 30 points -15 above and 15 below the mean. I will use the average range to classify texts as «above average», «average», or «below average» for each parameter.

The first two parameters, meaningful/rote and contextual/non-contextual, are different from the other three because many instructors want ALL activities and exercises to be both meaningful and contextualized. Thus texts could presumably aim for 100 % (and several reach this goal). The question with the other three parameters is one of balance: what is an appropriate proportion of open/closed activities, interactive/non-interactive, and communication focused/grammar focused activities/exercises? Open activities are usually interesting and invite the student to become involved in the interaction. However, closed activities can be used individually by students for self study and verification. Likewise, while one clearly wants to have a good number of interactive activities and exercises, it is not necessary that every activity

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and exercise be done interactively. And finally, as far as I know no one advocates the use of communication activities to the complete exclusion of all grammar-focused exercises. The data in Table 3 show that the average text has slightly more than one-half open activitiesexercises, and slightly under one-half of the activities/exercises are interactive. The average text has a proportion of slightly over one-third communication activities to two-thirds grammar exercises. As we shall see, however, the range for this parameter is quite large, with some texts making extensive use of communication activities and others depending heavily on grammar-focused exercises.

The great majority of current texts have moved toward the use of meaningful, rather than rote exercises. The mean is quite high (74%) so that activities/exercises even in texts classified in the following table as average are more often meaningful than rote. In fact the data from Table 2 of the Appendix show that 14 of the 17 college-level texts use meaningful activities/exercises at least 50% of the time. This increased use of meaningful activities/exercises appear to me to be the major improvement in Spanish texts in the last twenty years.

The average text today contextualizes more than one-half of the activities/exercises. This mean, in my opinion, is quite respectable, but it represents a statistic that masks the reality of current texts. Some authors have completely adopted contextualization as a goal and virtually all of their activities/exercises are contextualized. Other authors have not adopted this practice and a good number of texts contain very few contextualized activities/exercises. Table 5 shows that the mean of 65% is an average of two different norms. Contextualization is clearly becoming accepted, however, since eleven of the sixteen college level texts and all of the high school texts have contextualized more than one-half of their activities/exercises.

The majority of texts now make use of a good number of open activities/exercises. The mean for the seventeen college texts examined is 58% open and 42% closed. The data in the following table show that most authors have chosen to use a balance of about one-half open, one-half closed activities/exercises; few texts vary from the average.

For the purposes of this paper I counted as interactive only those activities/exercises that the authors had explicitly designed to be

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done in pairs or in small groups. In many cases, a large number of the other activities/exercises could be changed slightly and done interactively. A mean of 44% indicates that many textbook authors believe that about onehalf of the activities/exercises should be done interactively. Table 7 shows that the majority of current texts fall into the «average» category for this parameter.

The average textbook now incorporates a large number of communication activities (mean =40%) in addition to the traditional grammar exercises. Only five of the seventeen college texts are strongly dominated by grammar and none of the five high school texts are.

An examination of current beginning level college and high school texts using five analytic parameters shows that current texts are both qualitatively and quantitatively different from Spanish texts of the sixties and seventies. Methodological innovations as described in the five parameters have been incorporated in a majority of the texts examined. Whereas five years ago, an instructor who wanted to use a communication-based approach would have had a difficult time selecting a text compatible with this approach, today there are many fine texts to choose from. The data in this paper demonstrate that most Spanish texts are demonstratively «better» than previous ones, and it is likely that classroom practices have improved in the same directions.

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Allan, E., L. Sandstedt and B. Wegman. 1976. ¿Habla español?, 1st edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Almeida, J., S. Mohler and R. Steinson. 1986. Descubrir y crear, 3rd edition. Cambridge: Harper and Row.

Boylan, P., D. Rissel and J. Lett, Jr. 1988. En directo, 1st edition. New York: Random House/McGraw Hill.

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Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 73, Number 1, March 1990