A webinar presented by Ron Darvin (The Chinese University of Hong Kong).   

Download the presentation slides here. Watch the recording below.

As technologies continue to shape the way we construct our identities and access information every day, the integration of digital literacies in the language classroom becomes increasingly significant. Within social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok, learning management systems like Canvas or video conferencing tools like Zoom, there are different cultures and conventions of use that shape the way we communicate online. Recognizing that these communicative practices are constituted not only by users but also by the tools we use, this webinar draws attention to how the devices, designs and algorithms of digital platforms shape online language and literacy practices.  

By engaging a material and sociotechnical lens to examine online genres, this webinar provides practical strategies for teaching critical digital literacy. It goes beyond a functional approach that teaches learners how to communicate online, and instead helps learners develop a more critical understanding of why we communicate online in certain ways and how these practices have evolved. Through bridging activities that involve authentic texts and audiences, this genre-based pedagogical approach recognizes that agentive participation online requires an awareness of the often invisible ways these technologies work. By integrating a critical awareness of how online genres and conventions evolve, learners can build metalinguistic and metacommunicative skills that outlive the lifecycles of the online genres themselves. 

Bio:

Ron Darvin is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the English Department of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on issues of language and literacy learning, technology and critical pedagogy, and his recent study examining the digital literacies of immigrant youth in Vancouver, BC received the 2020 Dissertation Award of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL). He has conducted multiple workshops on teaching critical digital literacy for K-12 in-service and pre-service teachers in British Columbia, and in 2017, he received the Emerging Scholar Award from the Language and Social Processes SIG of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

Registration has closed for this event.

Webinar presented by Emily Hellmich (University of Arizona) and Kimberly Vinall (UC Berkeley Language Center). See the abstract below the webinar recording on this page.

➣ Click here for the webinar slides.

➣ Visit the accompanying website, where you will find instructional strategies for how to navigate machine translation and related online tools in the second language classroom.

Abstract:

Google Translate and other machine translation platforms can be a source of strife and confusion in language learning classrooms. Many instructors wonder if and how to handle these platforms with their students. This webinar presents a series of instructional strategies for how to approach machine translation platforms in the language classroom. These strategies come from findings of a research study that used screen recording and retrospective interviews to observe how foreign language learners (French, Spanish, Mandarin) actually use machine translation platforms while completing a writing task. In the webinar, we present key findings from the study and explore the implications they have for instructional practices.

By the end of the webinar, participants will be able to: 1) broadly describe how students actually use machine translation; 2) identify a range of instructional strategies in three areas (training, assignment creation, policies); and 3) reflect on how to integrate take-ways from the webinar into their own teaching/learning contexts.

Bios:

Emily Hellmich is an assistant professor of French & Second Language Acquisition/Teaching at the University of Arizona. Her work focuses on the impact of our global, digital world on language education. Her research has appeared in Teachers College Record, CALICO, Foreign Language Annals, and Computer Assisted Language Learning.

Kimberly Vinall is the Executive Director of the UC Berkeley Language Center. In her research she explores the relationships between languages, cultures, identities, and ideologies to explore the constructions of linguistic and cultural difference and their implications. She has published in the fields of education, applied linguistics, and SLA.

Registration closes at 5 p.m. on September 28, 2021.

For attendees of the Arizona Language Association (AZLA) annual conference, CERCLL is doing a presentation that focusses upon some of its recent projects:

Free Resources for Teaching Language, Literacy, and Culture

Presenters: Jill Castek, Beatrice Dupuy, Emily Hellmich, Kate Mackay, and Shelley Staples.

This presentation will introduce some of the newest resources for teaching language and culture, available online at no cost from the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL), a Title VI Language Resource Center located in Tucson, Arizona. Among them are materials for integrating socio-scientific issues into the FL classroom, and for designing, implementing and assessing multimodal projects; a set of materials that aid educators to integrate film-making into Spanish language classes; and a corpus of student materials in Portuguese and Russian, with guides for its use.

Presenters will touch on several new resources, and focus on these in particular:

• Translating Machine Translation: Pedagogical Guidelines Based on Student Use (also see Fall webinar), Emily Hellmich
• Advancing L2 Composition through Socioscientific Issues, Emily Hellmich and Jill Castek (see more information and webinar here)
• Film School for Global Scientists, Jill Castek (also see Fall webinar)
• Multilingual Academic Corpus of Assignments – Writing and Speech, Shelley Staples (see the resource page, including links to the MACAWS interface and to webinars and explaining how to use the resources)

The first webinar of the 2021-2022 academic year by the University of Arizona’s Second Language Acquisition and Teaching program features CERCLL: Opportunities for Engagement With CERCLL is intended for current University of Arizona students and will discuss opportunities to be involved in CERCLL research projects, to take part in CV-building conferences and other professional development events, to engage with the community at local events, and to learn more about funding opportunities. The panelists are:

• Dr. Beatrice Dupuy, Co-Director of CERCLL, and Professor in the French & Italian Department, the Public & Applied Humanities Department, and the SLAT Program
• Kate Mackay, Associate Director of CERCLL
• Mariana Centanin Bertho, 3rd-year Ph.D. student in SLAT

The moderator for the webinar will be Nina Conrad, 4th-year Ph.D. candidate in SLAT. Please see the attached flyer for panelist bios and more information.

Please register in advance of the webinar by filling out this form. After registering, you’ll receive a confirmation email with the Zoom link for the webinar.

Webinar presented by Young Ae Kim, Jieun Ryu, Sojung Chun, Seungmin Eum, Seojin Park, Sunyoung Yang (see individual bios below).

Language educators teach languages as well as important fields such as diverse cultures, social justice, interpersonal skills, and multimodal literacy. In addition to these areas, our project expands language education to include socioscientific issues (SSIs) such as Eastern/Western medicines, COVID-19, eco-friendly travel, and machine translation in Korean language classrooms. SSIs are closely related to STEM fields and as STEM has been gaining more currency in our daily lives, it is useful to incorporate SSIs in language classrooms. Moreover, SSIs enable us to diversify the areas of study we provide in our language classrooms while fighting against the “STEM divide.” Our students can advance their understanding of the target language by critically engaging in SSIs through multimodal projects such as writing tasks based on the guided use of machine translation (GUMT), making COVID-19 memes, or creating digitized guides of eco-friendly travel. Our webinar will present language educators of different languages our four semesters of developing SSI curricula and pedagogy by using Korean as a case study. We will offer detailed instructor guidelines and teaching materials so that language educators who are not familiar with STEM education can implement SSIs in their classrooms.

This event is part of the CERCLL project Socioscientific Issues in LCTLs Classrooms.

See presentation slides here (PDF)

See instructor manual here

Bios

Young Ae Kim (Ph.D., University of Georgia) is an assistant professor at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. Her research interests include STEM education, teacher education, formative assessment, and integration of socioscientific issues in science as well as language learning.

Jieun Ryu (Ph.D., University of Arizona) is Director of the Critical Languages Program at the University of Arizona and holds a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. Her research interests include technology in L2 teaching and learning, Less Commonly Taught Languages pedagogy, and self-directed learning.

Sojung Chun (M.Ed., University of Manchester) is a Korean instructor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. She has extensive experience teaching Korean at the elementary to high school and university level.

Seungmin Eum (M.Ed., Korea University; M.A., University of Delaware) is a Ph.D. student in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. He holds a Korean language teacher certificate (level 2) issued by the Korean government and has worked as a Korean language instructor at several colleges in Korea and in the U.S. since 2008. His research interests are syntax, sentence processing, L2 sentence development, and Korean language education.

Seojin Park (M.A., Sookmyung Women’s University) is a Ph.D. student in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. Her research interests are identity (re)construction and second language learning/teaching of socially and culturally minoritized groups of learners/teachers.

Sunyoung Yang (Ph.D., University of Toronto) is a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona, where she has directed the Korean Language Program under the theme of technology-enhanced language learning. Her research and teaching interests concentrate on the influence of new media and digital technologies on society with a focus on youth, labor, and gender issues in Korea and East Asia.

Webinar presented by: Bruna Sommer-Farias, Adriana Picoral, Shelley Staples, Aleksey Novikov, Mariana Centanin- Bertho (see their bios below).

Please make sure that you have a google account so that you can access the materials and collaborative activities during this webinar.

Participants in this free, live webinar will explore the Multilingual Academic Corpus of Assignments – Writing and Speech (MACAWS), an ongoing project building a corpus of assignments (written texts, spoken discourse, and multimedia products such as blogs) produced by learners in Russian and Portuguese language programs at the University of Arizona. Following the premise that language is highly patterned, participants will learn how to create digital pedagogical materials using interactive Data-driven Learning (iDDL) to inductively guide students to discover language patterns. Participants will be guided through a hands-on experience on how to embed MACAWS searches into their activities and how to integrate iDDL with other available technologies, such as forms, websites, and collaborative boards.

Details about the MACAWS resources and links to the interface are here: https://coh-arizona.com/cercll/blog/macaws/.

See presentation slides here (PDF).

Bios 

Dr. Bruna Sommer-Farias is Assistant Professor in the Master of Arts in Foreign Language Teaching program at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on genre and corpus-based pedagogy, multilingual genre learning, and world language teacher education.

Dr. Adriana Picoral is an Assistant Professor of data science in the University of Arizona’s School of Information, and an affiliated faculty member in the interdisciplinary graduate program of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) also at the University of Arizona. Her research draws from corpus and computational linguistics to shed light on multilingual language use, acquisition, and development.

Dr. Aleksey Novikov is a Ph.D. candidate in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. His academic interests include register variation, L2 Russian syntactic and morphological complexity development, corpus-informed pedagogy, Data-driven Learning (DDL) and Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT).

Mariana Centanin-Bertho is a PhD student in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. She is an instructor of Portuguese at the same institution. Her research interests include phonological acquisition of L2/L3, bilingual speech, learner corpora, and data-driven language learning.

Dr. Shelley Staples is Associate Professor of English Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on corpus-based analysis and pedagogy. Her publications can be found in Journal of English for Academic Purposes, English for Specific Purposes, Applied Linguistics, Modern Language Journal, and TESOL Quarterly.

Webinar presented by Jill Castek, Rachel Floyd, Emily Hellmich, Blaine Smith, Wen Wen & Austin Morris from the University of Arizona (see their individual bios below).

Multimodal projects use multiple modes to communicate ideas. In the digital world, images, sounds, colors and other design features together convey meaning that one mode alone cannot fully express. This webinar illustrates how composing across multiple modes (e.g., video, images, animation) can increase learners’ motivation, build digital literacies, and L2 expand communicative capacity. Classroom examples connect multimodality with socioscientific issues (controversial, real-world problems informed by science, e.g., global warming, genetic engineering) to encourage understanding of complex issues.

In this interactive webinar, participants will learn: 1) about multimodality; 2) how socioscientific issues can dovetail with multimodal projects; and 3) strategies for designing, implementing, and assessing multimodal projects in their own teaching contexts.

This event is part of the CERCLL project, Advancing L2 Composition through Socioscientific Issues.

To access resources related to this project and webinar, please visit this website created by the presenters here.

You can also access the padlet used by presenters during the webinar and view participants’ contributions here:

Section 1 Multimodality application & interaction slide (slide 15)

Section 2 Designing Instruction application & interaction slide (slide 37)

Section 3 Implementing Instruction (slide 50).

Section 4 Assessing Learning (slide 66)

Section 4 Assessing Learning (slide 67). 

See presentation slides here (PDF).

Bios

Jill Castek is an associate professor in the department of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona. Her research addresses the intersection of literacy and technology and examines the development of literate capacities, both in print and digital forms, in classrooms and beyond them. Her work explores how literacy and collaborating digitally can support language development, knowledge building, and STEM learning.

Rachel Floyd is a graduate student in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching interdisciplinary graduate program at the University of Arizona. She earned her Master’s in French and Bachelor of Arts in French and Psychology from the University of Tennessee. Her research interests include multiliteracies, technology-enhanced language learning, and professional learning of language instructors.

Emily Hellmich is an assistant professor of French & Second Language Acquisition/Teaching at the University of Arizona. Her work focuses on the impact of our global, digital world on language education. Her research has appeared in TeachersCollege Record, CALICO, Foreign Language Annals, and Computer Assisted Language Learning.

Blaine Smith is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the multimodal composing processes of culturally and linguistically diverse adolescents and teacher integration of technology. Her research has appeared in Reading Research Quarterly, Research in the Teaching of English, Written Communication, Journal of Second Language Writing, and Computers & Education.

Wen Wen is a graduate student in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona. Wen Wen obtained her M.A from the University of Arizona majoring in Language, Reading, and Culture. Wen is a doctoral student focusing on digital literacies, multimodality, and technology-enhanced teaching and learning.

Webinar Presented by Manuela Wagner, Professor in the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at the University of Connecticut.

In this webinar we start by reflecting on connections between teaching languages and preparing our students for the challenges they (and we as a society) face (see UN global issues). Questions include: What should students learn in and take away from language education? Should language education go beyond the goal of teaching language proficiency? If so, what are some objectives language education can realistically pursue? Together we will reflect on the increasing demand for students to learn how to engage in intercultural dialogue, as evidenced by national and international initiatives to include intercultural competence (IC) in education in meaningful ways (e.g., ACTFL, Council of Europe, PISA assessments 2018).

Wagner will introduce some examples in which the models of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC, Byram, 1997) and Intercultural Citizenship (ICit, Byram, 2008) were applied to help students acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to engage in intercultural dialogue and solve problems together. Through interactive activities, participants will 1) discuss and reflect on the role of culture and ICC and ICit in language education, 2) discuss the implementation of models of ICC in sample activities, and 3) come up with connections to their own teaching. Participants will think about possible challenges and concerns regarding this way of teaching. Challenges and lessons learned from prior projects will be shared to allow for a beginning conversation about applying this theory to practice in different contexts. Finally, participants will reflect on how this way of teaching is linked to teaching for social justice, anti-racism, and decolonization.

This event is one in a two-part webinar series on exploring Intercultural communication in the L2 classroom.  The other webinar is presented by Natalie Amgott.

See presentation slides here (PDF).

Bio:

Manuela Wagner is Professor in the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at the University of Connecticut. In her research, teaching, and service she focuses on the integration of intercultural dialogue and citizenship and social justice in education. An important goal in this work is to foster an environment in which students sustain different parts of their identities. She is particularly interested in the interplay of theory and practice and enjoys collaborating with colleagues in a variety of contexts and disciplines. Examples of projects can be found in her co-authored and co-edited volumes: Teaching Intercultural Citizenship Across the Curriculum: The Role of Language Education (2019), Teaching Intercultural Competence Across the Age Range: From Theory to Practice(2018), Education for Intercultural Citizenship: Principles in Practice (2017). Other research interests include intellectual humility and conviction, humor in a variety of contexts (language education, German-speaking cultures), and first language acquisition (pragmatic development in infants and children and language development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder).

Registration closes at 5PM (Arizona) on May 25, 2021.

Webinar presented by Natalie Amgott, a doctoral candidate in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona.

In the twenty-first century, the growing importance of multicultural and multilingual competences is undeniable in our global economy (Douglas Fir Group, 2016). While decades of educators have called for channeling the “multi” into our modes, genres, and registers of language teaching materials (e.g., the New London Group, 1996), little research exists on how multimodal composing can mediate expansion of linguistic and cultural repertoire in L2 contexts outside of EFL and ESL (Kumagai et al., 2015; Schmerbeck & Lucht, 2017).

In this webinar, postsecondary instructors and administrators of world languages will learn how to leverage multimodal composing for language learning and cultural reflection in study abroad contexts. A brief overview of how multimodal composing has been applied to EFL and ESL contexts will highlight how multimodal projects support academic learning (Pacheco et al., 2017), self-reflection (DeJaynes, 2015), and multilingual identities (Cummins et al., 2015). Amgott will then illustrate how the findings in EFL and literacy research can be translated to the postsecondary study abroad arena.

Attendees will learn about the importance of modeling and scaffolding for fostering engagement and access to full multilingual and multimodal repertoires through multimodal composing (Pacheco & Smith, 2015; Smith et al., 2017) and discuss how multimodal and technological workshops can be coupled with discussion of the vlog genre in order for students to reflexively explore their study abroad environment. After this session, attendees will be able to apply their understanding of multimodality and their course context(s) to encourage students to use multimodal vlogging to reflect on cultural and socioemotional experiences, to develop metalinguistic awareness, and to promote goal-setting and accountability in the language learning community.

This event is one in a two-part webinar series on exploring Intercultural communication in the L2 classroom.  The other webinar is presented by Manuela Wagner.

See presentation slides here (PDF).

Bio:

Natalie Amgott is a doctoral candidate in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona, where she teaches French and co-coordinates the basic language curriculum. Her teaching interests center on interdisciplinary approaches to multiliteracies, program evaluation, and L2 curriculum design for French and ESL. Amgott’s research interests mirror her pedagogical pursuits, and her dissertation focuses on how different groups of stakeholders (e.g., administration, faculty, graduate instructors, and undergraduate students) perceive teaching and learning through project-based multiliteracies courses. Her research published in L2 Journal demonstrates how students learning French abroad use multimodal composing to position themselves as emerging bilinguals. Her other publications and collaborations treat project-based critical literacy, students’ perceptions of multimodal composing, scaffolding of multimodal projects, and multimodality in the linguistic landscape of Orlando.

Registration closes at 5PM (Arizona) on May 7, 2021.

Participants attending can request a certificate of attendance for 1.5 hours of Continuing Education during the live event; or participants they can request a digital badge after the event.

Participants requiring closed captions at the time of CERCLL’s events should request this at least a week in advance by emailing CERCLL at cercll@email.arizona.edu.

A webinar presented by Sonia Colina and Sarah Albrecht, University of Arizona.

Pedagogical translation is making a comeback in the multilingual language classroom as an activity that promotes literacy, metalinguistic and cultural awareness, translanguaging, language diversity, and community engagement.  While theoretical papers on this topic are becoming more common, practical guidance for teachers on how to incorporate translation in their curriculum in an informed manner is scarce. This presentation will help teachers understand the historical context that banned translation, the justification for its reintroduction, and the roles translation can serve in language learning.  Participants will be guided through sample activities and will learn basic steps to design translation activities that meet their learning goals.

This webinar is part of a larger CERCLL project, Cross-Cultural Thinking Through Translation and Interpretation

See presentation slides here.

Bios:

Dr. Sonia Colina is Professor of Spanish and Director of the National Center for Interpretation at the University of Arizona, where she teaches Spanish linguistics, translation studies and coordinates the Online Translation Certificate.   In her translation studies research, she specializes in applied linguistics and translation, translation quality assessment, pedagogy of translation, and translator education. She is the author of Fundamentals of Translation (CUP, 2015), of Translation Teaching: from Research to the Classroom (McGraw-Hill, 2003), and of numerous articles in edited volumes and translation journals (e.g., Target, The Translator).   In addition, she has published on the relationship between translation studies and language teaching, most recently “Translation in Spanish Language Teaching: the Integration of a “fifth skill” in the Second Language Curriculum,” coauthored with Barbara Lafford (Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 4:2). Dr. Colina is the Principal Investigator for the CERCLL funded project “Cross-cultural thinking through translation and interpretation.”

Sarah Albrecht is a doctoral candidate in Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona, where she teaches linguistics for pre-service teachers. She is interested in equitable language education and in teaching courses in linguistics, heritage and second-language pedagogy, and bilingual education. Her research interests are related. They include pedagogies for combined or separate heritage and second language courses, biliteracy, bilingualism, and bridging the gap between bilingual education in the primary grades and heritage language education in the secondary grades. Her publications about dialect awareness, heritage language teaching, and intercultural competence also reflect these interests, as do collaborations regarding pre-service teacher preparation in bilingual education and this ongoing work on translation.

Registration will open in March; it closes at 5PM (Arizona) on April 20, 2021.