Robert J. Blake
Nuevos Destinos: A CD-ROM for
Advanced Beginning Spanish*
Robert J. Blake
University of California at Davis
ABSTRACT
This article provides a description of the Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM, a
joint production of McGraw-Hill Publishing Companies, the Annenberg/
CPB Project, and WGBH Productions for students learning Spanish at the
advanced-beginning, intermediate-low, or native-speaker’s level. The CDROM, along with four hours of video, is accompanied by the choice of
one book for each of these three audiences (advanced beginners, intermediates, native speakers). Issues of good interface design will be discussed
with particular attention paid to how the CD-ROM medium can simulate
social discourse despite the obvious absence of any true face-to-face contact. The Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM asks students to listen to authentic
dialogues, view QuickTime™ movie clips, read foreign language texts,
answer questions in several formats, record their voices, do activities, perform office tasks, and actively practice writing short compositions in Spanish in the form of e-mail messages sent to other story characters. The
overall intent is to involve students in some meaningful way with the Nuevos
Destinos plot by asking them to solve the real-world problems encountered in the law offices of Raquel Rodríguez, the lawyer originally hired
by Don Fernando Castillo five years earlier (i.e., Destinos televideo Spanish course). The CD-ROM materials supply clues to the final plot resolution not contained in either the textbook or the four hours of video.
KEYWORDS
Advanced Spanish CD-ROM, Simulation, Interactive, Real-World Activities, Negotiating Meaning, Five-Year Destinos’ Update
*A brief and less theoretically based description of the Nuevos Destinos interface can be
found in Blake (1998). I would like to acknowledge the wonderful working relationship
with the entire Nuevos Destinos team, but especially Thalia Dorwick and Bill Glass of
McGraw-Hill and Ted Sicker of WBGH.
© 1999 CALICO Journal
Volume 17 Number 1
9
Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM
BACKGROUND AND SLA PERSPECTIVE
Learning another language is a demanding enterprise that requires from
600 to 1,320 contact hours to reach a high level of proficiency, depending
on the language (Bialystok & Hakuta, 1994, p. 34). At the same time,
most second language acquisition (SLA) theorists would agree, in some
basic formulation of the issues, that formal L2 teaching is often unsuccessful because L2 learners receive impoverished or insufficient input in
the target language (Cummins, 1998, p. 19). Technology, then, if used
wisely, could play a major role in enhancing the L2 learners’ contact with
the target language, especially in the absence of study abroad. But a word
of warning is in order from the outset: technology only provides a set of
tools, which are methodologically neutral. How these tools can best be
used is determined by a particular theoretical stance. This article looks at
the CD-ROM platform, one tool in the technological arsenal for teaching
languages, and reports on both the theoretical and practical planning that
went into designing Nuevos Destinos, a CD-ROM program for advanced
beginning Spanish (http://www.wgbh.org/wgbh/learn/ndestinos/
index.html).
CD-ROM technology is, by now, a familiar resource for foreign language teachers. The leading first-year textbooks are all accompanied by
some type of CD-ROM package. Their advertising “spin” usually describes
these programs as “highly interactive,” but what exactly does that term
mean for today’s L2 learners? The question begs a more fundamental issue of what type of language practice is most conducive to SLA.
Undoubtedly, the term “interactive” is closely associated with one of the
most popular theories of SLA, the interactionist approach, which subscribes to the idea that a second language is best learned and taught through
interaction (Long, 1981, 1991; Pica, 1994; Gass, 1997; Doughty, 1998).
Pica, Kanagy, and Falodun (1993, p. 11) state that “Language learning is
assisted through social interaction of learners and their interlocutors [italics added], particularly when they negotiate toward mutual comprehension of each other’s message meaning.” This sets up an inherent contradiction for any CD-ROM program that dubs itself as “interactive” because no
one is really “there” in a CD-ROM program to interact with.
In the classroom setting, the interactionist approach has focused much
attention on having students perform meaningful tasks that make them
focus their attention on linguistic forms. In their attempt to solve realworld problems, then, L2 learners also “notice the gap” between where
they were linguistically in terms of their interlanguage and where they
must go in order to solve the task at hand.
In this process of negotiating meaning, L2 learners bootstrap their way
toward the target language in a painfully slow, but sure, manner. Fortunately, the language profession has embraced the importance of classroom
10
CALICO Journal
Robert J. Blake
activities that are task-based and collaborative in nature. This task-based
approach has been extended to the activities included in the better foreign
language CD-ROMs as well. But, again, there still is no human presence
to collaborate with when running a CD-ROM application, which is the
sine qua non of the interactionist SLA stance. The basic theoretical question examined in this article, then, is whether or not a CD-ROM program,
such as Nuevos Destinos, can successfully promote L2 learning through
real-world activities which at least approximate some sense of “interactivity”
that is consonant with the interactionist approach, although no other
interactant is present.
Most CD-ROM programs minimally do something in response to users’
clicks, typing, or other keyboard/mouse actions. This minimal reaction
often constitutes the sole basis for labeling the program as “interactive.”
But the more social definition described above is what remains critically
important for SLA. L2 learners are motivated to learn by being incited by
other speakers to use the target language. Even in the absence of a human
partner, Reeves and Nass (1996, p. 5) have shown that computer users
still tend to interact with machines in a fundamentally social manner, just
like interactions in real life. Programs that capitalize on this fact usually
solicit more favorable reactions from computer users. In part, this was the
underlying design philosophy for Nuevos Destinos.
The Nuevos Destinos project was conceived with an eye to simulating
social interactions, despite the obvious absence of any face-to-face contact. The program should be judged on how well it approximates this goal,
without any hope of fully obtaining this objective, much like the theory of
calculus is predicated on approaching, but never completely arriving at,
its mathematical limit.
CONTEXT OF THE PROJECT
The Nuevos Destinos project was a joint production of McGraw-Hill
Publishing Companies, the Annenberg/CPB Project, and WGBH Productions. These organizations were the original producers of Destinos (WGBH
Educational Foundation, 1992), the highly acclaimed 26-hour televideo
course for teaching beginning Spanish. I was hired as the chief academic
consultant for the Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM project with the responsibility of generating an overarching story line for the video and the initial
concept for the CD-ROM interface, including specifications for all tasks,
activities, and exercises. In reality, Nuevos Destinos (WGBH Educational
Foundation, 1997) quickly became a team effort, much like making a movie,
involving a multitude of talents, namely, the publishers, producers, project
manager, production staff, artists, dialogue writers, chief academic consultant, programmer, advisory board, and student pilot testers. It is hard
Volume 17 Number 1
11
Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM
to attribute the final product to any one source when this type of synergism is in play. Insightful and creative ideas came from a range of participants during the numerous group discussions of the planning phase.
The project was well financed by the Annenberg/CPB Project with approximately $550,000 for filming the video and programming the CDROM. From start to finish, the video and CD-ROM production took about
a year and a half to complete. The planning stage involved group discussions over the period of six months, beginning with an initial “brainstorming” meeting in New York that brought together an advisory board made
up of academic consultants and college Spanish teachers who were already heavy users of Destinos (“Destino-heads,” as it were). The board
members were asked what they thought their students wanted to know
about the Castillo family five years later. They reported that their students
wanted to have some of the loose ends in the Destinos’ plot tied up: for
instance, what happened with respect to Raquel, the Castillo family lawyer, and Arturo, the half-brother of Don Castillo’s lost son, Angel? Did
Don Fernando die? What about Gloria’s gambling problem? A few board
members also advised that Destinos’ 26 hours of video (approximately
one hour per week for two semesters) was overwhelming for certain students; the new project needed to reduce the video to 4 hours, 15 minutes
of use in the classroom per week. This board also made other recommendations detailing what they thought an ideal computer program should
provide students. Existing CD-ROMs for teaching language, both the good
and the bad, were reviewed to get a feeling for the market and the medium
possibilities.
These suggestions were culled and then presented to the production
team which spent the next six months fleshing out both the video plot and
the general interface concept for the CD-ROM. In addition to conference
calls and e-mail discussions, this group meet two times during this period
at the WGBH facilities in Boston to smooth out particular features of the
project and develop the most believable plot that the video and programming budget would support.
Fortunately, the project could also count on using the excellent cultural
footage available from the original Destinos series, as well as the unsurpassed graphic design expertise provided by the WGBH studios in Boston. The production team was responsible for creating a visually believable, virtual law office. The budget also provided for a fully dedicated
third-party programmer, fully versed in the use of Director in order to
reproduce the Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM in a format compatible for both
the Macintosh and Windows markets.
12
CALICO Journal
Robert J. Blake
CONTENT CONSTRAINTS/ADVANTAGES
The Nuevos Destinos video project consisted of 3 hours of new video
and 1 hour of clips taken from Destinos which were used to summarize
previous actions from the original 52-episode series. These summary clips
were included to allow both new and old Destinos viewers to be able to
follow the new Nuevos Destinos plot.
The CD-ROM complemented the video segments but also presented
plot material and information that was not included in the original video
segments. The video and CD-ROM together were conceived from the beginning as multipurpose materials that would be linked to three separate
textbooks: Nuevos Destinos for intensive beginners or low intermediates,
Con destino a la comunicación for students in a conversation course, and
Nuevos Destinos: Español para hispanohablantes for native speakers. But
the project team also designed the video and CD-ROM as standalone
materials that could be used without reference to any of these three textbooks.
In addition to making Nuevos Destinos accessible to both new and old
Destinos viewers, there were other limitations placed on Nuevos Destinos
plot by the main funding organization, the Annenberg/CPB project. For
budgetary reasons, only one of the original actors, “Raquel” (Liliana Abud),
could be recalled for taping new video footage and only one new actor
could be added to the existing (and very long) list of characters from the
original series. This restriction extended into the voice recordings as well.
In other words, the ever-popular and dashing character of Arturo could
not be recalled in the flesh, although his character still serves an important role in the Nuevos Destinos’ plot. The story line had to be written so
that Arturo had a presence via letters, faxes, and e-mails, without ever
being physically present. The video taping itself had to be done in only
one location, again, for financial reasons, in stark contrast to Destinos’
lavish multi-country taping that took place in Spain, Argentina, Puerto
Rico and Mexico. The new video was taped in San Diego in one week’s
time.
A distinct advantage of the Nuevos Destinos project over the original
series was the targeted audience. Nuevos Destinos was designed for intensive or advanced beginners and, consequently, the script writers could
employ more sophisticated language than that of Destinos. This circumstance was especially important for the CD-ROM, which inherently relies
heavily on text for reading and writing. In practical terms, it meant higher
linguistic expectations, fewer sanitized texts, more authentic-sounding
dialogues and readings, and fewer glosses.
Volume 17 Number 1
13
Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM
DESIGN AND PRODUCTIVE NARRATIVE
As the concept and interface design for Nuevos Destinos began to
emerge, the students’ role with respect to the CD-ROM loomed first and
foremost. How could the students fit in Nuevos Destinos’ basic story line?
The design team wanted students to listen to authentic dialogues, view
QuickTime movie clips, read foreign language texts, answer questions in
several formats, record their voices, do activities, perform tasks, and actively practice writing short compositions in Spanish. The overall intent
was to involve students in some meaningful way with the Nuevos Destinos
plot by asking them to solve real-world problems. The CD-ROM materials were also intended to supply clues to the final plot resolution not contained in either the textbook or the 4 hours of video.
It was finally decided that students would enter the virtual CD-ROM
world as junior law clerks for the law firm whose senior partner was Raquel
Rodríguez, the lawyer originally hired five years ago to investigate Don
Fernando Castillo’s suspicions that he had other previously unrecognized
heirs by his first marriage. Five years later, Don Fernando, the Castillo
family patriarch, has long since died (both the character and the actor
himself!) and Don Pedro, his brother and lawyer for the wealthy Castillo
estate, has been suffering serious health problems. As the action of Nuevos
Destinos begins, Don Pedro has just passed away and with him, the secrets of the Castillo family fortune. Enter the villain, the Mexican government, that is interested in expropriating the La Gavia estate in order to
turn it into a historical monument, all for the glory of the state (or at least
the PRI).
A new young lawyer living in Mexico City, Lucía Hinojosa, has been
engaged by the Castillo family as the estate’s executor. She immediately
seeks Raquel Rodríguez’ advice, with the hope of getting a more complete
picture of the inheritance structure and possible legal claims on the estate,
starting from all pertinent information from the first case (i.e., Destinos).
Raquel directs her employee (i.e., the user—our language student) to help
Ms. Hinojosa in every way, starting with the documents already laid out
on the junior law clerk’s desk. Each lesson begins with a personal communication from either Raquel or Lucía, detailing what tasks must be accomplished that day.
When students open the Nuevos Destinos program, they are first invited to choose an old or new version of that lesson. The program will
retrieve previously saved work and allow further changes. If “new” is chosen, students log in with their name and indicate their gender. The program will try to reflect their gender in various forms of address used
throughout the office tasks (e.g., e-mails, faxes, etc.).
The main menu screen offers students 15 lessons. Clicking on any particular lesson brings up that episode’s title and two small graphics: one
14
CALICO Journal
Robert J. Blake
depicts the action found in the corresponding video lesson and the other
shows a reduced photo of the law clerk’s desk for that lesson (the papers
and documents change from lesson to lesson) (see Figure 1).
Figure 1
Nuevos Destinos Main Menu
Clicking on the story line graphic opens a new window with three to
five still images digitized from the video, in addition to a short textual
passage summarizing the story’s action to that point. Clicking the desktop
takes students directly into the office environment and begins the lesson.
The Nuevos Destinos interface was designed to be visually sufficient
and fully compatible with the standard Macintosh and Windows environments; that is to say, no words should be necessary in order for students to
know what to do. An ever-present “Options” button in the left corner of
the screen provides an obvious means to quit the program, return to the
main menu, access legal vocabulary, review the “to-do list” for that lesson,
or reset sound volume. (Help is also available under this same “Options”
button in the form of labels, if all else fails.) All documents, telephones,
audio tapes, computers, and archives can be accessed by a simple click of
the mouse in like fashion to these devices’ normal operation in real life.
Volume 17 Number 1
15
Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM
Opened windows or documents can be closed by clicking the small, square
close box in the upper left hand corner, again, a standard feature of both
the Macintosh and Windows environments. Shifting from one window in
the foreground to another in the background also requires just a single
click. Glossed words have small red dots located underneath the target;
glosses appear by mousing down on these red-underlined words. When
Raquel or Lucía are about to walk through the door (via QuickTime movie
clip), a white arrow begins to flash at the top of the screen, prompting the
user to click at this location to pan up from the desk to the doorway. Both
the telephone and the computer signal new messages in traditional realworld ways (i.e., by beeping and/or blinking). Students are not forced,
however, to follow a prescribed course of action, but the program does
gently alert them from time to time to possible courses of actions. Performing a particular series of actions can trigger the telephone to ring or
the arrival of new e-mail or Raquel’s “entrance” into the office.
At both the beginning and end of each lesson, either Raquel or Lucía
“addresses” students in order to instruct, summarize, and comment on
the story’s progress (see Figure 2).
Figure 2
Addressing Students
16
CALICO Journal
Robert J. Blake
The visual effect itself is produced by using a standard QuickTime movie
clip of Raquel or Lucía, which was taped using a chromo-keyed technical
to blend the figures into the virtual graphic world of the office—a standard trompe l’œil trick from the video world that translates convincingly
to the computer medium.
These QuickTime clips and, in some cases, the digital recordings not
only serve as a “hook” for the present and subsequent lessons but also
provide students with a peer tutor who can simulate a dialogue that invites users to develop a personal stake in the plot. Reeves and Nass (1996)
have demonstrated the importance of having a teacher/peer presence or
“teaching agent” (see Hubbard, 1999) in learning materials in order to
make a connection with the learner. Students have a desire to interact
with people, not just information. These QuickTime movies allow the
Raquel or Lucía character to appear to adjust to, and even anticipate,
changes in the plot, making the work of the students feel that much more
real, as if they were responding to a human situation or relationship.
The computer screen’s point of view originates from behind the junior
law clerk’s (i.e., the user’s) desk, complete with telephone, laptop computer, tape recorder, and various documents strewn across the desk. In
this way, the students’ point of view always coincides with the law clerk’s
perspective, with an eye to further highlighting the illusion that the students are direct participants in the story line. As the user “looks up” from
the desktop by clicking, the program pans up to reveal a door to the right
of a wall with a bookcase full of pertinent archival materials (e.g., maps,
old correspondence, photo albums, genealogy charts, etc.). It is through
this door that Raquel or Lucía can “enter” the office and “talk” to the
junior law clerk. The cursor changes to a small person icon when placed
over the entrance door, allowing the QuickTime movie clips to be stopped
or replayed at any time by clicking the mouse.
After playing the QuickTime movie clip of Raquel or Lucía, a post-it or
“to-do” list appears to remind students of the day’s work agenda. This todo list appears automatically in the first lesson but is available in subsequent lessons by clicking on a desktop document. Students read background articles and correspondence (e.g., a pamphlet on La Gavia, excerpts from a book on the Spanish Civil War, a letter from Don Fernando’s
first wife, etc.), study relevant geographic maps (e.g., cities from Spain,
Argentina, Puerto Rico and Mexico that figure in Destinos’ plot), answer
telephone messages, transcribe audio tapes, prepare summaries, send email messages to clients, and send faxes. In other words, students must
perform tasks common to real-world law offices around the world with an
eye to collecting data pertinent to the solution of the Castillo case (see
Figure 3).
Volume 17 Number 1
17
Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM
Figure 3
Desktop Documents
In pedagogical terms, these duties are divided into datos ‘evidence,’
actividades ‘activities,’ and tareas ‘tasks.’ Each piece of evidence is associated with a comprehension check, ¿Cuánto entiendes? ‘How much do
you understand?’ in one of three formats: multiple choice, true/false, or
listen and record your voice. When students open a dato file, a green
sphere labeled ¿Cuánto entiendes? appears on the left of the screen. Feedback for wrong answers provides useful clues that lead students to discover the correct solution. With the first wrong response, students receive
audio input. With the second incorrect try, a textual clue appears, usually
a bit-mapped fragment excerpted from the original reading assignment
with the critical passage highlighted in bold (see Figure 4).
18
CALICO Journal
Robert J. Blake
Figure 4
¿Cuánto entiendes?
ngm
isi
A third wrong answer prompts the program to supply the correct answers. Again, this type of feedback was designed to invite users to discover the correct answer by refocusing on the pertinent sections of the
dato in either aural or textual form. The ¿Cuánto entiendes? section can
be attempted or re-attempted at any time during which the corresponding
dato window is open.
The actividades ask students to accomplish something for Raquel or
Lucía: for instance, complete a family tree (see Figure 5), drag photos and
match them with the appropriate captions, organize Raquel’s notes, or fill
in the portions of a fuzzy fax. When completed, all actividades become a
permanent part of the office’s archives and can be accessed from the archival bookcase of future lessons.
Volume 17 Number 1
19
Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM
Figure 5
Actividades
Finally, the tareas or writing assignments are all realized within the medium of the office’s laptop computer. While working on this computerwithin-a-computer medium, users have access to a personalized notebook
where their comments and annotations can be saved from lesson to lesson, a complete list of the Destinos characters and their respective biographies and photos, a Spanish-to-English dictionary, and a mailbox with all
previously read and sent e-mails. Users routinely receive writing assignments from Raquel and Lucía in a similar fashion to the normal asynchronous communication conducted in e-mail exchanges. For example, students receive a message which directs them to “send a fax to the Castillo
family lamenting the death of Don Pedro” (see Figure 6), “summarize
Raquel’s Argentine notes for me,” “ or “e-mail Lucía to tell her that her
travel plans to Los Angeles are fine.”
20
CALICO Journal
Robert J. Blake
Figure 6
Tareas
The interface allows students to print these assignments or to save them
electronically to turn in to their instructor. Because of the assignments’
open-ended nature, no automatic feedback algorithm or linguistic parsing
tool can be applied to what the students write. Given the enormous technical problems of instantiating a parsing routine for open-ended paragraphs,
foreign language teachers (real people!) continue to provide the best feedback for this type of writing. Besides, handing in the tareas is the best way
for teachers to verify that the CD-ROM lessons are being properly utilized. The writing assignments have been phrased so that it would be nearly
impossible to finish them without already having worked through the entire lesson for that week. The written assignments provide the instructor
with the means of integrating the Nuevos Destinos materials into the classroom curriculum.
The students’ e-mail replies are also filed in the archives for future reference and made available for subsequent lessons from within the laptop
computer environment. Not only do students receive e-mails from Raquel
and Lucía but also from co-workers, friends, and strangers in order to
Volume 17 Number 1
21
Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM
expose students to different voices and different discourse styles. The varied types of discourse found in these e-mails allow students to practice
writing both formal and informal Spanish. For instance, a paparazzi-type
Argentine reporter contacts the junior law clerk through e-mail in one of
the later episodes and tries to dig up some personal “dirt” on Raquel’s
relationship with Arturo Iglesias, the half-brother of Don Fernando’s long
lost son, Angel Castillo. He offers the law clerk money to reveal personal
information about Raquel and Arturo, but Raquel finds out about the
offer and warns the junior law clerk (i.e., the student) to be careful not to
commit a breach of ethics or loyalty to Raquel and the firm. Students have
complete freedom to decide how they will respond to this reporter and
what course of action they will take. In another instance, J. R., an old
schoolmate from law school, makes contact to check up on how the Castillo
case is going and also to share personal love-life stories, respectively. Again,
every attempt has been made to make the office tasks seem as authentic as
possible and resemble real-world situations and everyday asynchronous email exchanges. These e-mail messages from other characters further enhance the presence of teaching agents.
CONCLUSIONS
Working together with others strikes me as the ideal way to produce a
foreign language CD-ROM. Each participant brings special talents to the
project: namely, foreign-language content, interface design, graphic design, or programming expertise. No one individual can be a master of all
of these trades. The Nuevos Destinos project succeeded precisely because
it capitalized on the value added by the individual members of the team.
For a foreign language professional like me, relinquishing the project’s
control to the group allowed me to learn from the best (the production
staff at WGBH) about how to maintain a visually stimulating and professional CD-ROM interface. The goal was to create a language CD-ROM
that would push the profession further and squeeze out the maximum
amount of useful input for L2 learners in the most engaging environment
possible with present technology.
Although the Nuevos Destinos interface can never truly generate communication in the purely interactionist sense, it still constitutes a cleverly
designed vehicle for simulating interpersonal discourse. More important,
its interface was designed to motivate L2 learners to perform activities
and tasks as if there already existed a basis for cooperation within the
context of a real-world law office. If this ruse succeeds, it is due, in grand
part, to WGBH’s meticulous creation of a believable virtual office environment, complete with graphics and chromo-keyed QuickTime movies.
In other words, students encounter a standardized fiction much like in the
22
CALICO Journal
Robert J. Blake
movies, which displays qualities of verisimilitude without actually being
real. If the interface and plot are believable and entertaining, L2 learners
will play along with the game and imagine that they are Raquel’s junior
law clerk. The production team pushed this fiction to the limit and, judging from the initial marketplace reaction (see Lafford, 1999), the results
have achieved considerable success. I suspect that Nuevos Destinos’ realworld, task-based approach will put pressure on the profession to provide
similar uses of the target language in the production of other CD-ROMs,
at least until HAL, the talking computer, goes on line in 2001 or, alternatively, is rebooted in the year 2010 when the “kinks” have been worked
out.
REFERENCES
Blake, R. (1998). Constructing a CD-ROM interface for teaching Spanish. In K.
Cameron (Ed.), Multimedia CALL: Theory and practice (pp. 303-307).
Exeter, UK: Elm Bank Publications.
Bialystok, E., & Hakuta, K. (1994). In other words. New York: BasicBooks.
Cummins, J. (1998). E-lective language learning: Design of a computer-assisted
text-based ESL/EFL learning system. TESOL Journal, 33, 18-21.
Destinos. (1992). Boston, MA: WGBH Educational Foundation and Washington,
DC: Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Doughty, C. (1998). Acquiring competence in a second language: Form and function. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Learning foreign and second languages (pp.
128-156). New York: The Modern Language Association.
Gass, S. (1997). Input, interaction, and the second language learner. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Hubbard, P. (1999, June). Teaching agents in tutorial CALL. Paper presented at the
Annual Symposium of the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium, Oxford, OH.
Lafford, P. (1999). Review of Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM. CALICO Journal, 17
(1), 144-154.
Long, M. (1981). Input, interaction and second language acquisition. In H. Winitz
(Ed.), Native language and foreign language acquisition (pp. 259-278).
New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Science.
Long, M. (1991). Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology. In C. Kramsch & R. Ginsberg (Eds.), Foreign language research in a
cross-cultural perspective (pp. 39-52). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM. (1998). Boston, MA: WGBH Educational Foundation
and Washington, DC: Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Volume 17 Number 1
23
Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM
Pica, T., Kanagy, R., & Falodun, J. (1993). Choosing and using communication
tasks for second language instruction. In G. Crookes & S. Gass (Eds.),
Tasks and language learning: Integrating theory and practice (pp. 9-34).
Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Pica, T. (1994). Research on negotiation: What does it reveal about second-language learning conditions, processes, and outcomes? Language Learning, 44, 493-527.
Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). The media equation: How people treat computers,
television, and new media like real people and places. Stanford, CA:
CSLI Publications and New York: Cambridge University Press.
AUTHORS’ BIODATA
Robert J. Blake (Ph.D. University of Texas, Austin) is professor of Spanish
linguistics at UC Davis and Director of the Davis Second Language Acquisition Institute. He has published widely in the areas of Spanish syntax, history of the Spanish language, and applied linguistics. Professor
Blake is co-author of Al corriente (3rd ed.), a second-year Spanish textbook based on authentic reading materials and Internet activities. He was
the chief academic consultant for Nuevos Destinos CD-ROM (McGrawHill, Annenberg/CPB Project, and WGBH). Currently, he is helping to
develop a chat tool for distance learning, Remote Technical Assistance
(RTA, http://escher.cs.ucdavis.edu).
AUTHORS’ ADDRESS
Robert J. Blake
Department of Spanish and Classics
University of California at Davis
Davis, CA 95616
Phone: 530/758-0751
Fax:
530/752-4339
E-mail: [email protected]
WWW: http://philo.ucdavis.edu/~rblake/Blake_CV.html
24
CALICO Journal