This short lesson, "Comparte tu favorita receta" is a set of worked examples that provides tools to complete the communication task of sharing a favorite cooking recipe in Spanish.
As Clark & Mayer (2016) explain, worked examples effectively "reduce cognitive load associated with learning complex tasks" (p. 239). The authors define "a worked example is a step-by-step demonstration of how to complete a task" (p. 240). Worked examples not only apply to straight-forward tasks but strategic tasks and higher-level cognitive tasks. As the authors state, "Worked examples have been shown to increase learning and efficiency of learning in a wide range of skills domains" (p. 239).
Learning a language demands higher-level cognitive tasks. This lesson uses recipes to utilize grammar concepts such as infinitive verbs, impersonal SE, or present subjunctive as indirect commands.
Thoughts on creating this tutorial
The design of the lesson follows the multimedia principle, the contiguity principle, coherence principle, the personalization principle, segmenting principle, the pretraining principle, and the use of worked examples.
Some factors that I took into consideration:
- At the end of the lesson, learners are encouraged to complete two projects. Project 1 is related to Principle 3 (Promote self‐explanations to stimulate deeper processing of worked examples) from principles to optimize benefits of worked examples.
- Suppose students need to review grammar points or access to grammar explanations. In that case, they can click on the links (Principle 4: Include instructional explanations of worked examples as a backup when learners cannot effectively self‐explain).
- I incorporated self-explanation questions. Clark & Mayer (2016) describes the two goals of these activities, "The goal of any self‐explanation question is two‐fold. First, it discourages bypassing the worked example, since an overt response is required. Second, by asking learners to identify the rationale that underlies one or more steps, they are encouraged to process the example in a meaningful way" (p. 250).
Reference:
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. Wiley.
February 2021