Development and Evaluation of a Self-Instructional Spanish Course.

The report describes the development and evaluation of a self-instructional Spanish course that was designed to produce an elementary communication skill, sufficient to enable a visitor in a Spanish-speaking country to cope with routine situations he is likely to encounter. The course consists of 106 lessons in text and on tapes. The tapes are playable on any conventional tape device. The course involves what are believed to be the best features from the fields of modern classroom teaching, tutorial instruction, and programed instruction. A group of nine military personnel with no prior Spanish training completed the course in an average of 73.7 hours. Results were interpreted as establishing the feasibility of building self-instructional foreign language courses which teach a useful, although elementary, communication skill. (Author)