Webinar – Making Complex Content Accessible: Sustainable Development for Beginner Learners

In this interactive webinar, participants will learn how to (re)design beginner language courses and tasks in which literacy development progresses alongside rich, meaningful, and compelling content. Grounded in content-based instruction (CBI) and informed by the multiliteracies pedagogical framework, the session positions sustainability as an organizing thread for unit and task planning, thereby connecting novice learners to social, cultural, and environmental questions in Spanish-speaking communities at local, national, and global levels.

As way of example, this webinar looks to highlight four adaptable thematic modules implemented at Harvard University and unpack the decision-making behind selecting texts (written, audio, audiovisual) that are authentic, timely, and intellectually engaging—yet still appropriate for beginners. Participants will see concrete scaffolding routines they can use immediately: sequencing tasks from supported comprehension to guided analysis, layering language support for text-based interpretation, structuring collaborative meaning-making, and designing interpretive and presentational activities that culminate in multimodal student products.

To support transfer to participants’ own contexts, we will share takeaways from multiple semesters of implementation, including learner feedback on engagement, perceived difficulty level, and growth in confidence and accuracy. Time will be built in for discussion of how access to sophisticated content can motivate learners at any proficiency level, support identity-affirming classroom discourse, advance critical analysis of “glocal” problems, and strengthen program goals without overwhelming students or instructors. Participants will leave with practical templates for designing units and tasks, building interpretive and presentational task sets, and aligning outcomes to proficiency, literacy, and sustainability awareness.