Developing Digital Game-Mediated Foreign Language Literacies 

Project Directors: Drs. Jonathon Reinhardt (U. Arizona) and Julie Sykes (U. Oregon)

As mainstream socio-cultural practices and products, digital games are now a viable medium for foreign language instruction. The primary goal of this project is to provide educators the resources (both material and pedagogical) needed to design, implement and assess digital game-mediated learning activities. Explore the project on the website available here.

Project Director: Dr. Peter Ecke (U. Arizona)

The development of “cultural intelligence” is a key outcome of study abroad programs, yet few instruments exist to assess this quality. This project addressed the need for ready-to use, easily adaptable instruments and tasks to assess students’ development of cultural intelligence during study abroad. These are available on the project website.

Topic-based Modules for Preparing the Future FL Professoriate to Teach with a Multiliteracies Approach across the Undergraduate FL Curriculum 

Projects Directors: Drs. Heather Allen (U. Wisconsin–Madison) and Beatrice Dupuy (U. Arizona)

Existing foreign language teacher training models focus on lower-level language acquisition, failing to prepare graduates for a world where language, literature and culture are inseparable in nature and significance. This project developed modular, multiliteracy-based professional development frameworks for teaching assistants that focuses on language teaching at higher levels, available on the project website, and resulted in a textbook, A Multiliteracies Framework for Collegiate Foreign Language Teaching (Pearson Higher Education, 2015).

Despite the growing popularity of Persian courses on American campuses, the instructional materials currently available are either dated or unsuitable for English-speaking second language learners. This project will produce the last two volumes in a series of six, designed to teach Persian to college students or independent learners. The new textbooks will assist FL teachers of Persian in teaching students to read, write, listen and speak at the intermediate level and provide a foundation for an increased understanding of colloquial Persian.

Educating Global Citizens through Global Simulation

Educating Global Citizens through Global Simulation

Project Director: Dr. Beatrice Dupuy (U. Arizona) [In collaboration with CMES and Department of Russian and Slavic Studies]

This project will provide teachers of intermediate-level FL students with a systematic way of integrating Global Simulation (GS) into their instruction with the goal of promoting language and culture learning and critical thinking to better prepare their students to become global citizens.

Hypermedia Multimodal Text Annotation

Hypermedia Multimodal Text Annotation

Project Director: Dr. Robert Ariew (U. Arizona) [In collaboration with CMES and Department of French and Italian]

This project annotates different types of texts with multimedia hyperlinks (hypermedia) to facilitate linguistic as well as cultural comprehension of reading texts for language learners. Hypermedia can clarify, explain and illustrate not only the meanings of words and expressions, but also rhetorical, socio/cultural, historical and other concepts embedded in the text.

Teaching Portuguese to Spanish-Speaking Learners

A Structured/Enhanced Input Approach for L1, L2 and Heritage Learners 

Project Director: Dr. Ana Carvalho (U Arizona) [In collaboration with the Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese]

Building on the language skills of Spanish speakers (native speakers, heritage speakers, FL/SL learners of Spanish), this project focuses upon teaching Portuguese through the early introduction of reading authentic texts. This project provides a rich source of authentic materials for Portuguese teachers and learners through a website offering both classroom tasks and web-based language learning materials online.

Games to Learn

Language and Culture Acquisition through Computer Game Design and Play

Project Directors: Drs. Ken McAllister (U Arizona) and Judd Rugill (Arizona State University) [In collaboration with the Learning Games Initiative and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies]

This project will facilitate the learning of FL skills by teaching language instructors how to inexpensively design and implement custom FL games using off-the-shelf computer game development tools that permit in-game FL dialogues between game characters and the player, in-game FL texts (such as found documents, journals, maps, and other game clues), and FL puzzles that the player must solve in order to advance the narrative of the game.

Project Director: Dr. Kathy Short (U. Arizona).

Only 50% of U.S. high school students study any foreign language and most K-8 students have little or no opportunities to study a language other than English or learn about a culture different from that of the U.S. This project exposes young learners to world languages and cultures by bringing an International Consultant and a Language and Culture Kit into K-8 schools, encouraging language exploration and benefiting both students and educators.

>> Learn more about the Bringing Global Cultures and World Languages into K-8 Classrooms project

Professional Development for Foreign Language Educators 
Project Director: Dr. Linda R. Waugh (U. Arizona)

This project responds directly to the needs of K-16 language educators, as assessed by a survey previously developed and administered by CERCLL. Educators will be empowered to explore new, different and often technology-enhanced approaches to teaching language and culture. CERCLL will offer workshops at the University of Arizona during the academic year, as well as in-service workshops at local and regional schools, and an annual 2-week summer workshop series.

>> Learn more about the K-16 Initiatives project, and access archived professional development materials from past workshops

Digital Literacies in and beyond the Classroom: A Hybrid Symposium on Research and Practice 
Project Coordinators: Drs. Jonathon Reinhardt (U. Arizona) and Chantelle Warner (U. Arizona)

Sharing practices is crucial to the continuing development of established fields, and critical to the growth of new fields. As a culmination of and extension to the CERCLL Games to Teach project, a hybrid symposium, both real and virtual, will be held in Fall 2014.

>> Learn more about the Digital Literacies symposium

International Conference on the Development and Assessment of Intercultural Competence
Project Directors: Drs. Beatrice Dupuy and Linda Waugh (U. Arizona)