Remapping the Foreign Language Curriculum

Remapping the Foreign Language Curriculum PDF Author: Janet K. Swaffar
Publisher: Modern Language Assn of Amer
ISBN: 9780873528061
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Janet Swaffar and Katherine Arens offer a holistic approach to postsecondary language teaching that integrates the study of literature and culture into every level of the curriculum. By studying multiple genres ranging from popular to elite, students gain an understanding of multiple communicative frameworks - and develop multiple literacies. Swaffar and Arens propose the use of a sequence of template-generated exercises that leads students from basic grammar patterns to a sophisticated grasp of the interrelations among language use, meaning, and cultural context. One example of their approach is the teaching of Laura Esquivel's novel Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate). From exercise to exercise, students consider use of tense, narrative strategy (the connection between recipes and plot), and the social codes in the novel compare the novel with the Hollywood film version (different imagery for different audiences) critique promotional descriptions of the film on the Internet examine a magazine interview of Esquivel (to expose the interviewer's assumptions) The authors combine theory and practice, research and personal experience, to present a new, interdisciplinary curriculum that should strengthen the teaching of foreign languages in junior colleges, four-year colleges, and universities.

Remapping the Foreign Language Curriculum

Remapping the Foreign Language Curriculum PDF Author: Janet K. Swaffar
Publisher: Modern Language Assn of Amer
ISBN: 9780873528061
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
Janet Swaffar and Katherine Arens offer a holistic approach to postsecondary language teaching that integrates the study of literature and culture into every level of the curriculum. By studying multiple genres ranging from popular to elite, students gain an understanding of multiple communicative frameworks - and develop multiple literacies. Swaffar and Arens propose the use of a sequence of template-generated exercises that leads students from basic grammar patterns to a sophisticated grasp of the interrelations among language use, meaning, and cultural context. One example of their approach is the teaching of Laura Esquivel's novel Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate). From exercise to exercise, students consider use of tense, narrative strategy (the connection between recipes and plot), and the social codes in the novel compare the novel with the Hollywood film version (different imagery for different audiences) critique promotional descriptions of the film on the Internet examine a magazine interview of Esquivel (to expose the interviewer's assumptions) The authors combine theory and practice, research and personal experience, to present a new, interdisciplinary curriculum that should strengthen the teaching of foreign languages in junior colleges, four-year colleges, and universities.

Educating for Advanced Foreign Language Capacities

Educating for Advanced Foreign Language Capacities PDF Author: Heidi Byrnes
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9781589013131
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Advanced language learning has only recently begun to capture the interest and attention of applied linguists and professionals in language education in the United States. In this breakthrough volume, experts in the field lay the groundwork for approaching the increasingly important role of advanced language learning in the larger context of multilingual societies, globalization, and security. This volume presents both general and theoretical insights and language-specific considerations in college classrooms spanning a range of languages, from the commonly taught languages of English, French, and German to the less commonly taught Farsi, Korean, Norwegian, and Russian. Among theoretical frameworks likely to be conducive to imagining and fostering instructed "advancedness" in a second language, this volume highlights a cognitive-semantic approach. The theoretical and data-based findings make clear that advanced learners in particular are characterized by the capacity to make situated choices from across the entire language system, from vocabulary and grammar to discourse features, which suggests the need for a text-oriented, meaning-driven approach to language teaching, learning, and research. This volume also considers whether and how information structuring in second-language composition reveals first-language preferences of grammaticized concepts. Other topics include curricular and instructional approaches to narrativity, vocabulary expansion, the demands on instructed programs for efficiency and effectiveness in order to assure advanced levels, and learners' ability to function in professional contexts with their diverse oral and written genre requirements. Finally, the volume probes the role and nature of assessment as a measurement tool for both researching and assessing advanced language learning and as an essential component of improving programs.

Designing World Language Curriculum for Intercultural Communicative Competence

Designing World Language Curriculum for Intercultural Communicative Competence PDF Author: Jennifer Eddy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350180696
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
This book creatively redefines how teacher educators and faculty in secondary and post-secondary language education can become designers with intercultural education in mind. The author aligns theoretical frameworks with practical features for revising the modern language curriculum via themes and novel tasks that transfer language learning from classroom to community, developing communicative competence for mediation and learner autonomy along the way. For novice and experienced instructors alike, this book empowers them to: - design curriculum from transferable concepts that are worthy of understanding and have value within the culture(s) and to the learner; - develop assessments that ask the learner to solve problems, and create products that transfer concepts or address needs of various audiences that they will encounter in community, life, and work; - direct language learners through a spiral, articulated program that supports academic, career and personal goals. Pedagogical features include a glossary of key terms, research-to-practice boxes, scaffolded design tasks, reflection questions and template samples representing language exemplars from the following languages and cultures: Arabic, Chinese, Èdè Yorùbá, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Ladino, Nahuatl, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Te Reo Maori and Urdu. The accompanying online resources offer blank templates, PowerPoints and guides for designing bespoke curricula with key performance assessments.

Transforming Postsecondary Foreign Language Teaching in the United States

Transforming Postsecondary Foreign Language Teaching in the United States PDF Author: Janet Swaffar
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401791597
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This volume addresses critical challenges and issues facing foreign language departments in colleges and universities across the U.S. It presents the insights of individuals who have built or are in the process of building foreign language curricula during a major transition period in postsecondary institutions. The authors of this volume come from various language departments and institutional experience from across the U. S., including private and public postsecondary foreign language teachers, researchers and administrators. The chapters address issues and provide templates for curricular change at all learning levels. The five sections of this book explore: Changing Perceptions about Foreign Language Learning; The Case for a Multi-literacy FL Curriculum in Concept and Assessment Praxis; Curricular Transformations: Historical Hurdles and Faculty Heuristics; Rethinking the Graduate Curriculum; Foreign Languages' Integration into the Interdisciplinary University. “This thought-provoking and timely volume addresses the question of how historic and current disciplinary, institutional and political conditions affect curricular transformation in collegiate foreign language programs. Responding to the issues raised in the 2007 MLA Report, this collection of nine essays presents a diversity of curricular models and approaches from different theoretical perspectives focusing on the integration of language and content. The book will undoubtedly be of great interest to a broad audience, such as foreign language educators, curriculum designers, administrators, graduate students and researchers.” Nelleke Van Deusen-Scholl, Yale College, CT, USA.

New Directions for Research in Foreign Language Education

New Directions for Research in Foreign Language Education PDF Author: Simon Coffey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317201728
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
New Directions for Research in Foreign Language Education brings together contributions by reputed scholars that examine the challenges, opportunities, and benefits of teaching and learning foreign languages. With a particular focus on languages other than English, the book looks at the socio-political dimension of language learning and teaching and the need to re-theorize multilingualism for our age. The volume includes a range of perspectives, from language teaching as an act of reconciliation to language learning across the lifespan, from innovations in assessment and curriculum to critical appraisals of pedagogy and textbook materials. Each chapter presents a clear case study drawn from diverse contexts to illustrate the different concerns of the contributors. The book is a valuable resource for all students, teachers, teacher educators and researchers who share an interest in researching multilingualism and the different facets of teaching and learning foreign languages.

Multiliteracies in World Language Education

Multiliteracies in World Language Education PDF Author: Yuri Kumagai
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317566092
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Putting a multiliteracies framework at the center of the world language curriculum, this volume brings together college-level curricular innovations and classroom projects that address differences in meaning and worldviews expressed in learners’ primary and target languages. Offering a rich understanding of languages, genres, and modalities as socioculturally situated semiotic systems, it advocates an effective pedagogy for developing learners’ abilities to operate between languages. Chapters showcase curricula that draw on a multiliteracies framework and present various classroom projects that develop aspects of multiliteracies for language learners. A discussion of the theoretical background and historical development of the pedagogy of multiliteracies and its relevance to the field of world language education positions this book within the broader literature on foreign language education. As developments in globalization, accountability, and austerity challenge contemporary academia and the current structure of world language programs, this book shows how the implementation of a multiliteracies-based approach brings coherence to language programs, and how the framework can help to accomplish the goals of higher education in general and of language education in particular.

Content-Based Foreign Language Teaching

Content-Based Foreign Language Teaching PDF Author: Laurent Cammarata
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136962743
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Pushing the field forward in critically important ways, this book offers clear curricular directions and pedagogical guidelines to transform foreign language classrooms into environments where stimulating intellectual curiosity and tapping critical thinking abilities are as important as developing students’ linguistic repertoires. The case is made for content-based instruction—an approach to making FL classrooms sites where intellectually stimulating explorations are the norm rather than the exception. The book explicitly describes in detail how teachers could and should use content-based instruction, explains how integration of content and language aims can be accomplished within a program, identifies essential strategies to support this curricular and pedagogical approach, discusses issues of assessment within this context, and more. Content-Based Foreign Language Teaching provides theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence for reforming curricula and instruction, describes models and curriculum planning strategies that support implementation of well-balanced FL programs, explores the transformative potential of critical pedagogy in the FL classroom, and offers illustrations of secondary and post-secondary language programs that have experimented with alternative approaches. Advancing alternatives to conventional curriculum design, this volume posits meaning-oriented approaches as necessary to create language programs that make a great difference in the overall educational lives of learners

Education for Sustainable Development in Foreign Language Learning

Education for Sustainable Development in Foreign Language Learning PDF Author: María J. de la Fuente
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000480194
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This unique volume utilizes the UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) framework to illustrate successful integration of sustainability education in post-secondary foreign language (FL) learning. Showcasing a variety of approaches to using content-based instruction (CBI) in college-level courses, this text valuably demonstrates how topics relating to environmental, social, and cultural dimensions of sustainability can be integrated in FL curricula. Chapters draw on case studies from colleges throughout the US and consider theoretical and practical concerns relating to models of sustainability-based teaching and learning. Chapters present examples of project-, problem-, and task-based approaches, as well as field work, debate, and reflective pedagogies to enhance students’ awareness and engagement with sustainable development issues as they acquire a foreign language. Insights and recommendations apply across languages and highlight the potential contribution of FL learning to promote sustainability literacy amongst learners. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators in higher education with an interest in Modern Foreign Languages, sustainability education, training, and leadership more broadly.

Foreign Language Teaching and the Environment

Foreign Language Teaching and the Environment PDF Author: Charlotte Ann Melin
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 1603293957
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
At a time when environmental humanities and sustainability studies are creating new opportunities for curricular innovation, this volume examines factors key to successful implementation of cross-curricular initiatives in language programs. Contributors discuss theoretical issues pertinent to combining sustainability studies with foreign languages, describe curricular models transferable to a range of instructional contexts, and introduce program structures supportive of teaching cultures and languages across the curriculum. Exploring the intersection of ecocritical theory, second language acquisition research, and disciplinary fields, these essays demonstrate ways in which progressive language departments are being reconceived as relevant and viable programs of cross-disciplinary studies. They provide an introduction to teaching sustainability and environmental humanities topics in language, literature, and culture courses as well as a wide range of resources for teachers and diverse stakeholders in areas related to foreign language education.

Genre in World Language Education

Genre in World Language Education PDF Author: Francis John Troyan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000216217
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Ideal for methods and foundational courses in world languages education, this book presents a theoretically informed instructional framework for instruction and assessment of world languages. In line with ACTFL and CEFR standards, this volume brings together scholarship on contextualized, task-based performance assessment and instruction with a genre theory and pedagogy to walk through the steps of designing and implementing effective genre-based instruction. Chapters feature step-by-step lesson designs, models of performance assessment, and a wealth of practical and research-based examples on how to make languages explicit to students through a focus on genre. Including sections on Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, and other major world languages, this book demonstrates how to effectively teach and assess world languages in the classroom.