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 CD-ROM, 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 Rodriguez, 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.

Author: Robert J. Blake