Consortium of Middle East National Resource Centers’ Virtual Language Workshop

Transformative Paradigms in the Middle East Language Classroom: Learning, Pedagogy, and Curriculum Development

The 2016 Western Consortium Middle East Language Workshop saw the importance of preparing language learners to operate in an environment enriched with digital technologies. The 2021 Middle East National Resources Centers Virtual Language Workshop seeks to build on this knowledge and to examine the transformative paradigms emerging as we move more and more into the online realm. Transformative pathways in pedagogy go beyond instrumental innovations to address social issues and multilingualism in the classroom.

With guest speakers:

• Dr. Yass Alizadeh (Lecturer of Persian, New York University), Whose Culture is in my Classroom? A Reflection on Teaching Culture in Today’s Language Classroom
• Dr. Emma Trentman (Associate Professor of Arabic, University of New Mexico), Theory, Practice, and Coordination: Curriculum Development in the Arabic Classroom

and 5 panels: New Paradigms in Teaching Culture; Curricular Design and Instructor Training for Today’s World; Collaboration in Online Learning; Multiliteracies, Performance and Assessment; and CERCLL Projects and Pedagogical Tools.

Panel 5 on Saturday April 10th focusses upon three projects that are supported by CERCLL: CERCLL Projects and Pedagogical Tools, moderated by CERCLL Co-Director, Chantelle Warner

The Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL) is a Title VI Language Resource Center at the University of Arizona. Its free resources and professional development opportunities focus on incorporating cultural awareness and multiliteracies into language teaching. Among the resources it supports are: a project researching linguistic complexity as one of the four markers of proficiency in L2 students studying Arabic; a Persian picture dictionary with accompanying audio files for college students; and Foreigncy.us, a platform used in an Arabic and Hebrew media class using completely authentic media materials for students at intermediate mid to advanced low on the ACTFL scale in an online, inclusive classroom. I

Paper 1: Developing a Pedagogical Tool for Arabic and Hebrew College Students Using Current Events Online Media from the Middle East, by Hanna Tzuker Seltzer, Ragy H. Ibrahim Mikhaeel and Franziska Lys (Northwestern University)

In our presentation we will share a unique course we taught for our Arabic and Hebrew students using Foreigncy.us. We will demonstrate how the use of authentic materials spanning politics and social issues helped students explore the specialized language of Media and build a comprehensive vocabulary in a virtual environment. (The Foreigncy site is operated by CERCLL.) 

Paper 2: Enhancing Linguistic Complexity in L2 Arabic Using Interactive Task-based Instruction, by Mahmoud Azaz (University of Arizona) and Hicham Assaoui (Virgnia Military Institute)

In this talk, we present the results of a study that enhanced language complexity in Arabic using interactive-task-based learning. Also, we provide training on task-based lesson planning. We conclude by discussing the potential of interactive task-based learning in bridging the gap between instruction and proficiency assessment in ME languages pedagogy. – This project is funded in part by CERCLL’s Title VI Language Resource Center grant, as well as by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Graduate College at the University of Arizona. There is more information about it here, and there will be a full workshop on this project next year.

Paper 3: An Online Theme-based Persian Picture Dictionary, by Narges Nematollahi (University of Arizona)

This presentation introduces an online Persian picture dictionary and discusses the ways through which similar dictionaries can be developed for other languages. The resource will offer a multimedia environment in which items in theme-based images are matched with words written in the Persian script accompanied by an audio file for pronunciation.

Dr. Nematollahi was was awarded a CERCLL Faculty Research Fellowship to support this project, and it was granted additional funds from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. There is more about this project and the other 2020 Faculty fellows here.

See the full details on the University of Arizona’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies workshop page, including contact information for those who have questions. Registration is free, but there limited spaces.

CERCLL is a co-sponsor of this event.

Webinar presented by Kristen Michelson, Assistant Professor of French and Applied Linguistics at Texas Tech University.  Contemporary communication and literacy practices increasingly occur in virtual spaces where texts are inherently multimodal. Yet, research and practice in second language (L2) reading lags behind everyday literacy practices by focusing primarily on linguistic modes of communication while underplaying the role of other semiotic modes in texts. In this webinar we explored reading as a way of encountering second language cultural practices and perspectives. Participants learned strategies for: 1) finding and curating authentic multimodal texts around specific cultural themes, 2) adapting and using frameworks for engaging students in reading multimodal texts, and 3) incorporating multimodal reading in the L2 classroom in tandem with language learning objectives.

See presentation slides here.

Bio:

Kristen Michelson is Assistant Professor of French and Applied Linguistics in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Texas Tech University, where she also directs the first and second year language program in French. Her scholarly work is anchored in multiliteracies pedagogies and has ranged from exploring global simulation frameworks as a way to foster multiliteracies, to tracing how foreign language teachers co-construct knowledge through digital social annotated reading, to investigating how second language learners of French interpret everyday internet texts. In this latter work, she has employed various methodologies in solo and collaborative research projects, including digital social annotated reading and prompted think-alouds. Her work aims to raise awareness of how particular representational choices are made with agency and intention against a backdrop of broader social contexts, and to provide opportunities for second language learners to understand and participate flexibly in cultural discourses of target language cultures.

Her work has been published in Foreign Language Annals; Language, Culture, and Curriculum; L2 Journal; and Issues in Language Program Direction. She has co-edited a special volume in L2 Journal on “Living Literacies” with Chantelle Warner, and co-edited the 2019 volume of Issues in Language Program Direction with Beatrice Dupuy on “Pathways to Paradigm Change” in foreign language education. Professor Michelson was awarded the 2020 Early Career Award by the ACTFL Research SIG, which recognizes early career scholars for excellence in research, contributions to the field, and promise for future impact in the field of foreign language teaching and learning research.

This event is one in a two-part webinar series on multi-modal literacies in second language classrooms.  The other webinar is presented by Sebastien Dubreil.

Registration closes at 5PM (Arizona) on April 6, 2021.

Presented by Sébastien Dubreil, Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Second Language Acquisition and Technology-Enhanced Learning at Carnegie Mellon University.

Linguistic Landscape (LL) studies have grown as a field and has led to a keen interest in using the linguistic landscape to foster second language (L2) learning. LL researchers and L2 educators have specifically focused on the linguistic and sociolinguistic benefits to L2 learners who engage the linguistic landscape (e.g., Cenoz & Gorter, 2008; Rowland, 2013; Sayer, 2010). Increasingly, however, L2 educators have gravitated to using the LL to engage with a more comprehensive and sophisticated understanding of the potential of LL studies in the L2 classroom to engage with issues of form and content. In particular, this has led to engaging with the multimodal nature of the LL as well as issues of power and ideology, diversity and inclusion.

In this workshop, participants become familiar with the fundamentals of work in the linguistic landscape and will examine how it can be leveraged to address several of the perennial challenges faced by L2 classroom instructors. Indeed, the LL is a site that necessitates attention to meaning, form, use, and cultural interpretation (meaning learners engage with both “language” and “content” simultaneously). Second, through judicious use of the physical environment and instructional technology, teaching the LL can make the second language and culture present and alive for the learners. Third, LL projects also have the potential to engage L2 learners with their own communities. Last, as an inherently interdisciplinary field LL-based pedagogies afford L2 instruction the opportunity to establish connections beyond language studies. Examples of such work are provided and participants are guided to envision how these principles can be adapted in their own practice to enhance language and culture learning.

This event is one in a two-part webinar series on multi-modal literacies in second language classrooms.  The other webinar is presented by Kristen Michelson.

Download the presentation slides here.

Bio:

Dr. Sébastien Dubreil is Professor of French and Francophone Studies and Second Language Acquisition and Technology-Enhanced Learning at Carnegie Mellon University. Specializing in Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Second Language Acquisition, his research interests include the definition of culture in the L2 classroom, its place in the curriculum, the assessment of culture learning, and the use of instructional technology in setting up effective language learning environments (e.g., multimedia technology, telecollaboration) to foster transcultural learning. Most recently, Sébastien’s research has led him to investigate the notion of social pedagogies, social justice linguistic landscapes, and game-based language learning. His gaming project, Bonne Chance, developed with Cary Staples and a team of graduate and undergraduate students was selected as a finalist for the 2015 Reimagine Education conference.

Professor Dubreil has published in the Modern Language Journal and the CALICO Journal, the International Journal of Personal and Virtual Learning Environment, and the L2 Journal among others, and has given presentations at numerous national and international conferences. Alongside Dr. Heather Willis Allen he co-authored Alliages culturels: La société française en transformation (Cengage Learning in 2014). He also co-edited Engaging the World: Social Pedagogies and Language Learning (2017, Cengage) with Dr. Steven L. Thorne. His most recent publications are Language Teaching in the Linguistic Landscape: Mobilizing Pedagogy in Public Space (Springer Educational Linguistics Series, Vol. 49, 2020), co-edited with David Malinowski and Hiram Maxim, and a co-edited special issue of the CALICO Journal, entitled Innovation & Creation: The Maker Movement (2021), with Gillian Lord.

SLAT Roundtable 2021

The Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Student Association (SLATSA) at the University of Arizona is pleased to announce the 20th Annual Interdisciplinary SLAT Roundtable, set to take place online on February 6, 2021, with synchronous and asynchronous events. The theme is Imagining the Future, Empowering the World: Approaches to Language Teaching, Learning and Research.  CERCLL is pleased to cosponsor this event.

Please send inquiries to the Roundtable Committee at:
COH-SLATSA@email.arizona.edu

A VIRTUAL Educators’ Workshop:

Globalizing the Community College

 Curriculum, by community college educators, for community college educators

This event is cosponsored by the University of Arizona’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, and CERCLL.

Dates/times: Friday, January 29 – Saturday, January 30, 2021

Location: Online

Eligibility: Attendees must be community college instructors,

For more information and to register, visit https://cmes.arizona.edu/outreach/virtualconference2021 

The Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Student Association (SLATSA) at the University of Arizona is pleased to announce the 20th Annual Interdisciplinary SLAT Roundtable, set to take place online on February 6, 2021. The theme in 2021 is Imagining the Future, Empowering the World: Approaches to Language Teaching, Learning and Research.  CERCLL is pleased to cosponsor this event.

The ideas that feed this theme revolve around the facts that:
– we need to adapt the way we do our work based on the way we are living;
– we need to use our privileges, skills, positions, and knowledge to continue creating spaces of empowerment; and
– we need to celebrate the outstanding job that we have done as a diverse community that is made up of language teachers, researchers, administrators, and learners.

SLATSA welcomes proposals from all fields doing language work: teaching, learning, administration, and research. And they are particularly interested in proposals that engage with the multidimensions of L2 learning:
– Linguistic dimensions
– Cognitive dimensions
– Instructional dimensions
– Socio-cultural dimensions
– Technology and L2 learning
– Language program administration

Submission categories include individual presentations and projects-in-progress. Individual presentations are formal talks addressing original empirical research or an original theoretical investigation. They may include more than one presenter. Our unique Projects-in-Progress Symposium is for applicants looking for feedback on research (e.g., study scope, data collection and analysis methods, data visualization, coding, and write-up) that they are currently beginning or working on.

Proposal Submission Deadline: December 15, 2020

Applications to present at this event should be submitted here: http://tinyurl.com/SLATRT2021CFP.
Applicants will be notified of their submission status by the end of December, 2020.

Please send inquiries to the Roundtable Committee at:
COH-SLATSA@email.arizona.edu

Webinar presented by Heather Willis Allen (University of Wisconsin-Madison).

Writing is a critical skill in personal, educational, and professional domains, yet its role in L2 (second language) education in the United States is unclear and several recent studies have identified presentational writing as the most difficult modality to teach and the one that students struggle with the most. In this 90-minute webinar, participants explored the principles of Design writing instruction and discussed pedagogical examples of how this approach can be used to integrate L2 reading and writing, to facilitate learners’ familiarity with and use of appropriate L2 writing conventions, and to foster dialogue around the process and products of L2 writing.

This event is one in a three-part webinar series exploring literacy-based lesson planning in the language classroom. The others were presented by Cherice Montgomery and José Aldemar Álvarez Valencia. 

Download the Presentation Handout

Bio:

Heather Willis Allen is Associate Professor of French in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a core faculty member of her university’s second language acquisition doctoral program. She teaches undergraduate French courses and graduate courses in applied linguistics and serves as Course Chair for Elementary French One and Two and Intermediate French One in her department. Her research has appeared in the ADFL Bulletin, Foreign Language Annals, the French Review, L2 Journal, and the Modern Language Journal. Her collaborative projects have included co-authoring A Multiliteracies Framework for Collegiate Foreign Language Teaching (2016 with Kate Paesani and Beatrice Dupuy) and Alliages Culturels: La Société Française en Transformation (2013 with Sebastien Dubreil) and co-editing the 2011 AAUSC volume Educating the Future Foreign Language Professoriate for the 21st Century with Hiram Maxim. Her current project is a book-length monograph on the use of Design pedagogy for teaching second language writing.

Registration closed at 5PM (Arizona) on December 4, 2020.

During the registration process, participants could request a certificate of attendance for 1.5 hours of Continuing Education for attending the live event; or participants they could 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.

As part of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies‘ Virtual Lessons Learned Series, Onur Kadir Ural will discuss using Google Docs as a language teaching tool in online classes in collaboration with Zoom, Teams, and other synchronous and asynchronous learning management systems.

This event is hosted by CMES (Center for Middle Eastern Studies in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona) and cosponsored by CERCLL and MENAS.

During the registration process, participants can request a certificate of attendance for participating in the live event.

See event flyer here.

Bio:

Onur Kadir Ural is a PhD candidate in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Program and second year Turkish language instructor at the University of Arizona. He received his BA in English Language Teaching from Cukurova University. He served as an English teacher and then a lecturer at Altinbaş University and Medeniyet University. Shortly thereafter he was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant in Turkish at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He brings a wide array of teaching experience into his PhD program and has a strong focus on integrating computer technology into his teaching. His most recent publication is “Using Gboard in language learning settings,” in the English as a Foreign Language Magazine on-line this year.

Registration is required before 4pm MST (UTC-7) on 12/2. Register here.

Contact CMES with questions: cmes@arizona.edu 

Presented by José Aldemar Álvarez Valencia, Ph.D., Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of Language Sciences at Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia.

Download the presentation slides (PDF)

The current communication landscape shows that communication is multimodal by nature. This new perspective on language and communication impacts directly second language acquisition and pedagogical practices. Multimodal pedagogies intend to bring this perspective into second/foreign language classrooms by highlighting the centrality of modes of communication and transmodal practices in the design of tasks that engage learners in processes of language/communication appropriation. By looking at language as one more semiotic resource among many others that make up communication ecologies, multimodal pedagogies recognize and look for ways to articulate and rearticulate students’ cultural semiotic resources, including their languages, their embodied communicative practices, and their identity affiliations.

In this webinar, participants are introduced to the main concepts of multimodal pedagogies such as design, modes, semiotic resources, and transmodality. Likewise, the presenter will discusses the main principles of this new approach, followed by some examples on how it can be implemented in a language/communication classroom.

This event was one in a three-part webinar series exploring literacy-based lesson planning in the language classroom. The others were presented by Cherice Montgomery and Heather Willis Allen. 

Watch presentation in YouTube

Bio:

José Aldemar Álvarez Valencia, PhD, is a professor of applied linguistics at the School of Language Sciences at Universidad del Valle, Colombia. He has been a language educator for more than 20 years in contexts such as the US and Colombia. He is the chair of the Major in ELT Education in the Interinstitutional Doctoral Program at Universidad del Valle. He has authored/co-authored several articles and book chapters in the areas of discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, language policy, language teaching approaches, teacher education, intercultural communication, and multimodality. His publications include a co-edited book titled Critical Views on Teaching and Learning English Around the Globe (Information Age, 2016) and the upcoming chapter titled: Practical and Theoretical Articulations between Multimodal Pedagogy and an Intercultural Orientation to Second/Foreign Language Education. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Colombian Association of Teachers of English (ASOCOPI). His current research focuses on the intersection of multimodal communication and intercultural communication, multilingualism, and nonverbal communication.

Registration closes at 5PM (Arizona) on November 17, 2020.

During the registration process, participants can request to receive a certificate of attendance for 1.5 hours of Continuing Education for attending the live event; or participants can request to receive 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.

Presented by Cherice Montgomery, Assistant Professor of Spanish Pedagogy at Brigham Young University.

Montgomery Webinar Handout_Nov2020 [PDF]

Montgomery Webinar Slides

Filmmakers are experts at producing memorable movies that educate, entertain, and inspire their audiences. Teachers have similar goals, but sometimes hesitate to engage learners with authentic texts or “real life issues,” fearing that the necessary language will be too complex for them to understand.  During this 90-minute, interactive webinar, participants: (1) learned a step-by-step process for skillfully integrating culturally authentic texts into meaningful interpretive communication activities; (2) explored effective techniques for supporting learners’ comprehension; (3) experienced interactive activities for assessing learners’ understanding.

This event was one in a three-part webinar series exploring literacy-based lesson planning for the language classroom. The others were presented by José Aldemar Álvarez Valencia and Heather Willis Allen.

View presentation in YouTube

Bio:

Cherice Montgomery holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy with an emphasis in Learning, Technology, & Culture from Michigan State University.  Her research explores the potential of design-based pedagogies, 21st century skills, and social technologies for affecting change in world language teacher education and professional development.

Montgomery’s professional endeavors have included the design and facilitation of a variety of grant-funded summer institutes and webinars aimed at helping world language educators to develop skills in mentoring, leadership, pedagogy, project-based language learning, and technology.  Her work is informed by a diverse array of K-16 teaching experiences, and she has been honored with several awards for excellence in teaching. She has also served as co-chair of the ACTFL Pimsleur Research Award Committee, as an advisory board member for several different Language Resource Centers, and as a member of the New Visions in Foreign Language Education Task Force and as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Critical Inquiry Into Curriculum & Instruction.  She currently coordinates the Spanish Teaching Major Program at Brigham Young University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in assessment, language teaching methods, literacy development, and technology.  Her current projects include extensive pedagogical work in literacy development and scaffolding, and grant-supported research in four different immersive language learning environments:  (1) Dual Language Immersion (DLI), (2) Foreign Language Student Residences (FLSR), (3) online, Playable Case Study simulations (PCS), and (4) Project-based Language Learning (PBLL)

Registration closed at 5PM (Arizona) on November 6, 2020.

During the registration process, participants could request a certificate of attendance for 1.5 hours of Continuing Education for attending the live event; or participants could request a digital badge after the event.

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