Background | Implementation | Student Performance | Reflections | Comments

Student Performance

One of the key elements in a second language class is motivation.  The level of motivation in this course was dramatically different, far more intense than anything I have ever experienced in the undergraduate classroom.  Students had commitments and personal missions that were driving their questions and desire to improve their Spanish. 

Grading
Throughout the semester, I experienced ambivalence about how to make my grading criteria clear and ensure that I upheld the expectations of quality that I associate with a course at this level.  At the end of the semester, my ambivalence was even stronger.  All my students made As and Bs, which is not a typical grade distribution for one of my classes.  But, when I looked at the quantity of work that the students had completed and especially the quality of their group presentations, I was profoundly impressed by their achievements.  Service learning gave the students a genuine motivation to analyze literary texts and social situations and to express what they discovered through critical thinking.  In terms of content, the group presentations were the best that I have ever seen in a course at this level; in terms of language mastery, their communicative success was dramatic and their grammatical accuracy was far above average.  The effectiveness of their rhetorical strategies for organizing ideas in a persuasive manner and the energy of their public speaking personalities were the best I have seen among Spanish majors. 

It is hard to measure the quality of the service activity performed outside of class.  From the reflection journals I had some sense of what took place each week.  Getting supervisor evaluations back was not easy, which is regrettable, for their observations could have helped me understand what learning took place.  But, this situation is also understandable and the supervisors in many cases accepted volunteers to collaborate with them because they were already overextended, and they had only limited time to dedicate to writing evaluations of the volunteers.  The oral presentations gave good insight into how much effort students had dedicated to their projects.  In the end, the final assessment for the actual service learning activity took into account what students had revealed in their journals, what supervisors commented about the volunteers, special circumstances associated with different service activities, and evidence of having fulfilled or exceeded the required time commitments. 

Student group presentation topics

• Resources for Latinos in the United States and specifically in Lawrence, Kansas.
• Latino women as immigrants.  The students looked at their plight as immigrant women regarding their roles of wife and mother.  The students discussed issues women face, such as fitting into this society, handling pregnancies (without the ability to pay for medical care), and mental health issues.  It was a moving presentation.  The group members were proactive, as evidenced by a flyer they prepared for women to learn about agencies available to meet their needs.
• Hillcrest Elementary School and English as a Second Language learners.
• Translation of AIDS materials for Douglas County Health officials.  The students did a shortened version of this health presentation in class.   
• Stereotypes and adjustment to life in the United States.  This turned out to be the most emotional presentation.  The group members discussed what they expected to encounter through the service learning project, what they learned, and what the families expected from them.  They synthesized the course materials well. As part of the presentation, they showed a video in which they interviewed the children and their parents regarding their experience of living in Lawrence.  It was a very personal entry into a very private world.

Student work
I have included four student papers, two examples each of paper # 1 and paper # 2.  For each paper, there is one example of a paper that was well done and one that needed improvement.  Unfortunately, the examples of a paper that needs improving in both papers 1 and 2 were written by the same student.  This student (student # 1) worked hard, but the writing skills just weren’t there. The examples of papers by students # 2 and # 3 both received 90%, which was a good grade for these papers.

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