Read+more+about+the+project.

= Welcome to our exchange between La Salle Bonanova, Barcelona and Fall Mountain Regional High School, New Hampshire =

This exchange will be carried out thanks to the participation of students La Salle Bonanova, Barcelona and Fall Mountain Regional High School, New Hampshire. Each of you will be assigned a partner, native Spanish student studying English as foreign language with whom you will exchange a series of messages over the next few weeks. These will be about different subjects, previously decided, related to yourselves, your culture, your society, etc. During this period you will be able to practise and improve your Spanish, but at the same time get to know better your partner and his culture.

All of this will be done through Wiki, because we consider its advantage to be the fact that all the correspondence is gathered in the same project, so when a new message is being written, all the previous mistakes can be consulted without the need to look for them in other places, and that way we would try to avoid their repetition.


 * Goals: **

Our main goal is to improve written expression in foreign language, in this case Spanish, and to help our partner to improve it in our own, in this case English. At the same time, we would like to encourage cultural relations, get to know better you partner and his culture, lifestyle, etc.

Instructions:

 * Every week you should write a message about a topic previously given in Spanish and English (200 words). You can see the topics in the part Tasks. The topics are about different subjects, in order to use varied vocabulary and verb tenses. You will be asked to write about yourself (your memories, vision of the future, etc), your country and different aspects of your culture (food, holidays, customs, etc).
 * To write a message, you have to go to your team's space. To enter click the third option from the left from the menu on the top of the page. Once you're inside you'll see a blank page. Click edit, write your message and save changes. Afterwards, simply add your next message, without deleting the previous one. It would be good to inform you're partner that you left a message, so he/she doesn't have to check all the time.
 * When you receive your partner's message, you have two tasks:


 * 1) Correct the mistakes he/she has made.
 * 2) Respond the message

- The corrections should be separated from a new text. They should be made before or after new message, but clearly marked. - Corrections shouldn't be done over the original messages, but in a copied message. They should be easily visible, marked with capital letters, colours, underlined or in the way that suits you best, but it should be understandable to your partner.

- Negotiate with your partner the most efficient way of correcting him/her: with colours,capital letters, brackets... It's about helping each other to improve your use of foreign language through corrections.

We offer you an example of how the correction should be.

//I present you Mary and John. Are Spanishs.//

correction:

I present you Mary and John. **They** are ** Spanish **. or I present you Mary and John. THEY are SPANISH. or I present you Mary and John. __They__ are __Spanish.__

You can also write comments or examples so that your partner understands better why he/she should put one thing and not the other:

I present you Mary and John. __They (__in English the subject of the sentence is mandatory) are __Spanish__ (adjectives are always singular)


 * Tips for Error correction: **

This exchange is based on mutual collaboration, therefore error correction is a very important part of the learning process.

> Select the most important errors (chose only ten in every message), particularly the ones that difficult the understanding.
 * 1) Always have in mind that by correcting your partner you are trying to help him/her, so try to make corrections clearly, tactfully and delicatly.
 * 2) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Don´t try to correct everything - this not only would take a lot of time to person correcting, but it could also demoralize your partner.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Languages to be used: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As in all language exchanges, both languages - English and Spanish - should be used equally. This way you will practise foreign language you are studying and at the same you have the opportunity to learn by reading a text written by a native, you from your partner and him from you. You shouldn't write in one language and translate the text in the other, but write one half of your message in Spanish and the other in English.

** Tools: **
For this project we will be using 2 tools:

1. The wiki
Our main tool is this Wiki we are on at the moment. We will get you all into pairs and we will assign you a workspace in the part projects of the wiki to work on together. Every team will receive their own space, to which the others will be able to access to read it, but not to modify it. The only ones able to do this will be the whose the space is. At the beginning every person will be added to his/her space and to access it you will have to click the team number <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(team 1, team 2, etc.) you will be informed. There is also a space in this Wiki called cafe where everybody can participate: there you can add text, images, videos, links to other places or anything you feel like, provided you respect other participants, in order to meet others and make friends with them.

2. The questionnaires
We will ask you to complete two questionnaires: [|one at the begging], the other one at the end. Please answer them, as it´ll help us with our research. Thank you very much.

=**<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">General Advices: **=


 * 1) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Always revise your texts before sending them to your partner.
 * 2) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Always have a dictionary to hand when you write. Try to use new vocabulary, not only what you always use. We recommend you on-line Collins Spanish - English dictionary ([]) that contains numerous words and expressions, both in English and in Spanish.
 * 3) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Pay attention to errors previously corrected by your partner. The advantage of Wiki is that everything is in one document and you can go through previous messages and use correct structures very easily.
 * 4) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Pay particular attention to your partner's messages, written in Spanish. Try to watch carefully the structures and vocabulary he/she uses. If you don't understand anything, feel free to ask him/her.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tasks
<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Every week you will be assigned a new topic to write about to your partner. Go to the page Tasks to see all the tasks and dates.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Credits
<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the end we want to thank you for your participation and wish you to improve your Spanish and take advantage to get to know your partner and his/her culture. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Have fun!