When I first taught Spanish 201 at Converse University, I hit the dreaded textbook wall. A course where you detest the assigned textbook, but have a colleague who feels the opposite and uses it for the next course in the language sequence. After struggling for a semester, I had enough. But instead of making students purchase a new textbook, I created my own.
This is the first course in our sequence that is devoted to reading (with grammar taught as a function of that). I scoured online and put together a carefully curated selection of 5 chapters (all with proper attribution), focusing on music, the environment, the arts, etc. In each chapter, students do several short readings, watch an informative interview, and cover a song that develops their listening skills.
But what about grammar? Repetition and workbooks are SO important at these levels, and I don’t think that anything will ever truly replace them. Instead of having students subscribe to an expensive proprietary system to do homework online, I coded “workbook” activities into Canvas. This system is not perfect – Canvas will tell students how many answers they go correct but not which ones (very frustrating), but the sacrifice, I believe, it worth it to make the class more economically inclusive. Cost of textbooks are often cited as one of the top reasons students dropout of college, and we should do anything we can to alleivate that.
