The Orbital Experience: Building Community Through Communication and Connections in High School Spanish Classes

This article highlights the Orbital Experience (OE), a unique experience that explores the affective domains of second language acquisition, including communication in the target language, making interdisciplinary connections, and fostering a community of learners. Through Orbitals, students serve as experts by researching a topic of interest, delivering an oral presentation extemporaneously to the class, and writing a paper connecting their topic to other content areas. This article reports a qualitative study of 41 high school students studying Spanish. Findings reveal that OE reduced anxiety in their Spanish oral communication by creating a unique social context in which they began to feel a sense of community as they learned more about their peers' interests. Implications include scaffolding communication, increasing motivation, and application of OE to other high school subject areas.