TEXTUAL INTERACTION THROUGH WIKISPACES IN THE TEACHING OF SPANISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

As teachers of foreign languages, we pursue to improve our students' communication skills; we aim at an optimum interaction amongst them. If we consider interaction as the core of the communication process, due to the fact that there is an exchange of information, written interaction is a skill that should be developed at a similar level to spoken interaction in order to consider our pupils competent students. For this goal to be achieved, some of us use wikis or web 2.0. The use of wikis to develop students' linguistic skills, mainly reading and writing, has been extended in the Teaching of Foreign Languages due to the fact that wikis are virtual platforms and as an element belonging to the area of Internet it is closer to the students' reality. Wikispaces is placed amongst the free access platforms addressed to independent users and, especially, to professionals of teaching. In the University of Wurzburg, as a teacher of Spanish as a Foreign Language, I have been working on projects with level A1 students whose written and reading comprehension skills have been improving through to the use of Wikispaces within the teaching-learning process. The aim of this paper is to present the results of some activities developed through the free access platform Wikispaces, proving its utility and the advantages of using an independent wiki instead of a platform belonging to the institution the students and teacher belong to.