Texts Across Contexts: Teaching Foreign Languages and Cultures
The 2016 CERCLL Summer Workshops focus on language learning through texts across various cultural and pedagogical contexts. The diverse set of workshops share in common an emphasis on the ways in which texts in various modes (linguistic, visual, filmic, etc) manifest conventionalized forms of speaking, meaning, and engaging in various contexts.
May 31-June 1
Reconsidering the Communicative Modes Through Text-Based Assessment Practices
Presenters: Heather Willis Allen, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kate Paesani, Wayne State University
Materials: PPT Day 1; Handout Day 1; PPT Day 2; Handout Day 2
In this workshop, participants will be challenged to reconsider definitions of interpersonal, presentational, and interpretive communication through the lens of foreign language literacy development, and to use these definitions to design text-based assessments for their courses. Using the backward design model and multiliteracies pedagogy to ground their work, participants will learn how to align student learning objectives with assessments, how to incorporate texts of various modes and genres into assessment practices, and how to evaluate students’ ability to communicate interpersonally, presentationally, and interpretively.
June 2-3
Teaching Texts as Genres in the Second Language Classroom
Presenter: Hiram Maxim, Emory University
Materials: PPT Day 1; Handout Day 1; PPT Day 2
In this 2-day workshop participants will gain practice in viewing texts as genres that consist of conventionalized communicative, schematic, and linguistic features and then explore how these specific textual properties can be leveraged for selecting, sequencing, teaching, producing, and assessing texts in the second language classroom. We will work initially on a common set of texts but then have time to develop genre-based materials for texts from their respective programs.
June 6-7
Linguistic Landscape as a Tool in the Foreign Language Classroom
Presenter: Diane Richardson, University of Arizona
Materials: PPT Day 1; Handout Day 1; PPT Day 2; Handout, Goals, Terms and Resources
This workshop will provide language instructors of all levels with concrete ideas for assisting their students’ in navigating the Linguistic Landscape (LL) of various communities and spaces. We will first explore the expanding definition of the (virtual) Linguistic Landscape, i.e. use of language in public spaces, – from street and store signs, to billboards, advertisements, monuments, buildings, graffiti, and more. Then we will consider the pedagogical benefits of the Linguistic Landscape for language learning and examine tangible ways of incorporating the LL as a tool and topic in the foreign language classroom. You will have the opportunity to act as learner/researcher, conducting your own mini-Linguistic Landscape analysis. Finally, we will consider means of assessment, including multimodal projects across levels that allow for community outreach and transcultural engagement.
June 8
Texts across Contexts: Maker Day
Presenters: Beatrice Dupuy and Chantelle Warner, University of Arizona
See our facebook photo album to find participants’ take-away concepts from the first workshops.
This additional day of making materials and lessons was inspired by the first three workshops. In the morning, participants work individually, with partners, or in small groups. In the afternoon, everyone meets to share what they have developed and receive peer and expert feedback. You do not need to have attended all three workshops to participate. Anyone who participated in any of the first three workshops was eligible to join in.
June 9
Globalizing the Common Core Standards in the K-12 Classroom through Children’s and Adolescent Literature
Presenter: Kathy Short, University of Arizona, and Mi-Kyoung Chang, Basis Oro Valley
This workshop introduces K-12 classroom teachers to global children’s and adolescent literature, specifically to books that could be paired with the text exemplars included with the Common Core Standards. Global children’s and adolescent books that are similar in theme and Lexile level can be paired with the more classic texts on the text exemplar lists in order to invite readers to make connections between their lives and the lives of peoples living in a range of global cultures. The workshop will involve interacting with the global books related to the grade level of each teacher to determine which have the most potential for use with students. In addition, strategies for developing and using paired texts in classrooms will be shared and explored. Both fiction and nonfiction will be explored.
June 10
Growing Multilingual Awareness and Intercultural Competence through Engagement with Diverse Texts
Presenter: Erin Kearney, State University of New York at Buffalo
Materials: PPT slides
From pre-K to university-level settings, the language classroom is a privileged space for engaging learners with languages and linguistic diversity and for growing multilingual awareness and intercultural competence alongside communicative proficiency. This workshop focuses first on exploring what it means to be multilingually aware and how this relates to intercultural competence. We then turn to the concrete actions teachers can take to design an environment and orchestrate interactions that foster multilingual awareness in students. Specifically, we will focus on resources for creating a multilingual ecology and strategies for meaningfully engaging learners as they encounter, interpret and engage with diverse texts.
Additional Workshop in the Summer Series
June 11
Augmented Reality Interactive Storytelling Games for Mobile-Assisted Language Learning
Presenters: Jonathon Reinhardt and Kayo Shintaku, University of Arizona
Materials: PPT slides
This workshop will teach participants the basics of using open source ARIS Software to create mobile iOS language learning stories and games. Participants will learn and discuss how storytelling, gameplay, and mobility dynamics afford second, foreign, or heritage language learning that leverage narrative, goal-based, informal, and embodied learning principles. Examples of iOS ARIS story-games for learning Spanish, French, Japanese, and Mojave will be demonstrated. Participants will then brainstorm, outline, storyboard, and develop their own language learning story-games.
Participants are required to bring their own iPhones or ipads.
Travel funding may be available for indigenous language educators for the Gaming workshop on June 11. See more details–including information about the project connected with this workshop–here.