May 31st – June 1st
Playing Stories and Reading Games: Developing L2 Literacies through Digital Gaming
Presenters: Jonathon Reinhardt (University of Arizona) and Julie Sykes (University of New Mexico)
See an updated version of this presentation about gaming and language education on our Summer 2012 Workshop Series page.
This two-day workshop will look at digital games and how they have been, and can be, used in the foreign/second (L2) language classroom. We will discuss theories of digital gaming and L2 learning and pedagogy, focusing on a literacies-informed framework. We will discuss practical examples of how digital games have been integrated into L2 curricula, and how they might be in the future. Participants will explore various kinds of games, including massively multiplayer online games, social network games, adventure games, simulation games, and mobile games, and discuss their potential for L2 educational applications. Participants will have the opportunity to evaluate a variety of existing games using appropriate frameworks, to try out game-enhanced materials in several languages, and to develop game-enhanced L2 learning activities for their own teaching contexts. Finally, participants will work together to design proposals for future game-based learning environments.
June 2nd – 3rd
For a Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Reconciling Communicative and Text-centered Instruction in the Elementary and Intermediate Foreign Language Classroom
Presenters: Beatrice Dupuy (University of Arizona) and Heather Willis Allen (University of Miami)
The 2007 MLA Report calls for large-scale curricular reform in university foreign language (FL) departments to integrate the study of language, literature, and culture and move beyond the language-content dichotomy that typically characterizes the undergraduate curriculum. A pedagogy of multiliteracies is proposed as a pathway toward this curricular reform.
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On Day 1, the presenters will engage the audience in identifying key features of the communicative language teaching paradigm and in considering how similar or different key features of a pedagogy of multiliteracies might be. Presenters and participants will then examine pedagogical frameworks and strategies for integrating textual content into introductory language courses. Next, the presenters will invite participants to consider what implementing a pedagogy of multiliteracies in the introductory curriculum might mean in terms of content to be taught. Mindful of the fact that textbook materials not only serve as a model of language use for teachers and students but also often function as “the bedrock of syllabus design and lesson planning” (Kramsch, 1988, p. 63) in introductory-level courses, together presenters and participants will reflect on the following questions: How can we move beyond the textbook as the primary source of content and vehicle for organizing instruction? How do we go about selecting and sequencing textual content? A few models which have been successful in expanding on materials found in textbooks used in introductory language programs will be used as a basis to jump-start the discussion.
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On Day 2, participants will work in groups to select a thematic unit in the textbook they use, locate textual genres for inclusion, sequence the selected textual content, and develop activities that can engage students with it and facilitate their linguistic development. Groups will present and share their work with others.
June 6th – 7th
Textualization and Recontextualization: Teaching for Literacy and Semiotic Awareness in the Foreign Language Curriculum
Presenter: Richard Kern (University of California, Berkeley)
From the origins of writing 5,000 years ago to the internet today, technology has always been central to language education by affording the possibility of creating texts that can be reviewed, analyzed or recontextualized. Writing and the visual media are our primary resources for learning about the past and present worlds outside our own community. When we examine texts to see the particular ways that other people use language to express ideas and experiences, we not only learn a lot about the conventions of the language–we also have a chance to begin to understand the beliefs and values that underlie those uses of language. This two-day workshop will focus on practical ways of integrating reading, viewing, writing, and thinking activities, with the aim of deepening students’ reflections on the texts they read and making them more aware of their own role as integral participants in the meaning-making process. Included will be consideration of connections between film and written texts to show how the interpretive skills students learn in one medium can often be adapted to the other medium. Participants will learn how film and written texts can be integrated in tasks and activities that support a broad-based foreign language literacy.
June 8th
- Applying the Performance and Visual Arts in the Second Language Classroom
Presenter: Denise Osborne (University of Arizona)
Although the application of performance and visual arts in education is not a new concept (e.g., the ArtsLit Project at Brown University, established in 1998), their application in the second language (L2) classroom is still a new endeavor. In this workshop, Osborne will propose the suitability of the Performance Cycle (from the Arts Lit Project) for the L2 classroom – a model in which performance techniques and visual arts give learners the tools to respond to learning formally and artistically.
This model consists of six phases: Building Community, Entering Text, Comprehending Text, Creating Text, Rehearsing/Revising Text, and Performing Text. Each of these phases is intermediated by a reflection in which students discuss their successes and areas for improvement, helping them become aware of their learning processes and reinforcing a sense of community. The Performing Cycle enables students to express themselves and establish a meaningful connection with the core of the text. The Performing Cycle is learner-centered in the sense that the outcomes are not under the control of the teacher, since the classroom activities involve creativity, imagination, and personal connections.
Using performance and visual arts as creative processes in second language learning provides learners encouragement to take risks and gain new perspectives, as they feel more engaged in the learning process. This goes beyond motivation, since performance and visual arts require analysis and cognitive abilities. Through exercises utilizing movement and collaborative work, participants in this workshop will experience the benefits of theater techniques and the Arts in general in the second language classroom.
- Communicative Language Teaching through Process Drama
Presenter: Leslie Sapp (University of Arizona)
This three-hour workshop focuses on the dynamic and highly effective educational drama form called process drama and its application to foreign and second language teaching.
Process drama is an extended, whole-group, improvisational drama process that involves all of the learners, all or part of the class time. Used for decades in reading, writing, and social studies classes in mainstream classrooms in the UK, Australia, and Canada, process drama has been rapidly gaining popularity in second language classrooms worldwide. Through ongoing speaking, listening, reading, writing, and critical thinking activities, process drama activates the intuition, imagination, and feeling of every participant, making it an extremely powerful and engaging language‐learning tool.
In this dynamic, three-hour, hands-on workshop, you will discover exactly what process drama is, how it works, and how to apply it in relation to foreign and second language teaching.
June 9th – 10th
The What and How to Teaching Culture in the FL Classroom: Introducing the Basics of Intercultural Communication
Presenter: Elisabeth Arevalo-Guerrero (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
Teaching culture in the foreign classroom often brings up the discussion of ‘what’ and ‘how’ to incorporate culture in an already overwhelming linguistic curriculum. The discussion responds to more specific questions on this matter: Are teachers prepared to teach culture? What cultures (that are represented under the umbrella of the target language) should be addressed? Is cultural knowledge enough? How do we assess culture? Will I sacrifice linguistic content? Is students’ resistance an obstacle or the beginning point to raise cultural awareness?
This workshop will respond to these questions by proposing an intercultural approach to teaching foreign languages. The intercultural approach urges teachers to go beyond the teaching of cultural aspects that mostly remain at the surface level of culture. Moreover, teachers’ intercultural competence is crucial in the development of learners’ intercultural competence learners.
In this two-day workshop participants will gain an understanding of the basic concepts of intercultural communication (culture, dimensions of culture, communication, verbal and non verbal communication, perceptions, values, etc) as a framework to design in-class activities and assignments that enhance learners’ intercultural communicative competence. Using experiential activities, participants will have the opportunity to reflect on the teaching of Culture (with a capital c) and culture (with a small c), and experience ways to include cultural learning through intercultural activities. Finally, participants will discuss challenges that they face to teaching of culture and share ideas on how to contextualize intercultural activities and assignments in their current practices.
Presenters' Short Biographies
Jonathon Reinhardt, Assistant Professor, University of Arizona.
Jonathon Reinhardt is an Assistant Professor of English Language/Linguistics at the University of Arizona, where he teaches in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Ph.D. program. His research interests focus on technology-mediated second/foreign language pedagogy, with a focus on digital gaming, computer-mediated communication, (CmC) and curriculum design and integration. His most recent work focuses on analysis of technology-mediated L2 learner interactions, the application of awareness-oriented and corpus-informed pedagogical frameworks, and the development of digital L2 literacies.
Julie M. Sykes, Assistant Professor, University of New Mexico.
Julie M. Sykes is an Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition at the University of New Mexico. Her research interests focus on the acquisition of second language pragmatics related to a variety of mediated and non-mediated contexts, with special attention to emerging digital spaces. Her current projects entail the design, implementation, and evaluation of Croquelandia (a synthetic immersive environment for learning Spanish pragmatics) as well as the use of place-based mobile games (Mentira) to engage language learners in a variety of non-institutional contexts. She has also presented and published on lexical development and web-based, self-access instruction for learners in addition to L1 Spanish research in the areas of phonology and translation.
Beatrice Dupuy, Associate Professor, University of Arizona.
Beatrice Dupuy holds an M.A. in English from the Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), an M.S. in Education (TESOL) and a Ph.D. in Education (Language, Literacy and Learning) from the University of Southern California. She has taught English as a Foreign Language at the pre-collegiate level in France, and French and English as a Second Language at the post-secondary level in the U.S. In addition to French language, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in second language acquisition. She is currently Associate Professor of French and Foreign Language Education in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Arizona where she also directs the Introductory and Intermediate French language program. She is also a faculty member of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) in which she serves as Chair of the Pedagogy Curriculum Sub-committee. She is co-director of CERCLL (Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language, and Literacy), a Title VI Language Resource Center funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Her research focuses on foreign language teaching assistants’ professional growth in relation to teaching in an integrated multidisciplinary and multi-literacy curriculum and on experiential learning as a theoretical and practical framework for foreign language education in home and study-abroad contexts. Her research has appeared in Foreign Language Annals, the Canadian Modern Language Review, System, Applied Language Learning, etc. She recently co-authored with Robert Ariew (University of Arizona) a first-year French textbook, Français Monde: Connectez-vous à la Francophonie (Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2011).
Heather Willis Allen, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Heather Willis Allen holds an M.A. in French Literature from the Louisiana State University (1998) and a Ph.D. in Educational Studies and French from Emory University (2002). In Fall 2011, she joined the Department of French and Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When she gave this workshop, she was Assistant Professor at the University of Miami, prior to which she was Lecturer of French and French Language Program Coordinator at the University of Pittsburgh (2002-2006). Allen’s research interests include language-learning motivation, teacher development, and literacy-based approaches to teaching and learning. Publications that she has authored on teacher development and literacy-based teaching have appeared in the ADFL Bulletin (2010), the French Review (2009), the L2 Journal (2010), the Modern Language Journal (2010), the NECTFL Review (2008), as well as in From Thought to Action: Exploring Beliefs and Outcomes in the Foreign Language Program (2007), Principles and Practices of the Standards in College Foreign Language Education (2009) and Sociocultural Research on Second Language Teacher Education: Exploring the Complexities of Professional Development (2011). Her research on language-learning motivation has appeared in Foreign Language Annals (2003, 2010), the Journal of Studies in International Education (2010) and Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad(forthcoming). Allen’s book-length projects include the AAUSC 2011 volume Educating the Future Foreign Language Professoriate for the 21st Century (Heinle Cengage, 2011) co-edited with Hiram H. Maxim and Alliages culturels: La société française en transformation, a literacy-based introduction to French culture today textbook co-authored with Sébastien Dubreil (Heinle Cengage).
Richard Kern, Associate Professor, University of California at Berkeley.
Richard Kern (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) is Associate Professor of French and Director of the Berkeley Language Center at the University of California at Berkeley. He teaches courses in French linguistics, applied linguistics, and foreign language pedagogy, and supervises graduate teaching assistants. His research interests include language acquisition, literacy, and relationships between language and technology. His book Literacy and Language Teaching (Oxford University Press, 2000) deals with the theory and practice of reading and writing in a foreign language. He co-edited a collection of research studies with Mark Warschauer entitled: Network-Based Language Learning: Concepts and Practice, published by Cambridge University Press. He is currently working on a book entitled Verbal, Visual, and Virtual: The New Interface of Language, Technology, and Literacy.
Denise M. Osborne , University of Arizona.
Denise M. Osborne is a Ph.D. student in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) program at the University of Arizona. She also teaches Portuguese as a second language at the same university. Her area of interest encompasses the acquisition of second language sounds by adult learners, both from a theoretical point of view and in its application in the second language classroom. She is also interested in the teaching and learning of a second language from a more interdisciplinary perspective, exploring, for example, how other areas of knowledge can contribute to the learning process. Osborne is Brazilian and received her Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics at Teachers College Columbia University. To know more about her, go to her website.
Leslie Sapp, University of Arizona.
Leslie Sapp has been teaching ESOL to adults since 2001. A veteran creator, performer, teacher, and director of movement-based story theatre, Leslie specializes in the integration of drama, movement, and storytelling activities into the teaching of ESOL.
Elisabeth Arévalo-Guerrero, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Elisabeth Arévalo-Guerrero is originally from Marbella (Malaga) in southern Spain. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Elisabeth obtained her Doctoral degree in 2009 from the Language, Literacy, and Culture Ph.D. Program at UMBC. The title of her doctoral dissertation is: Assessing the development of intercultural communicative competence in the foreign language case: The intercultural Spanish composition and conversation class. She also holds an M.A. in Intercultural Communication and her Certificate in Instructional System Design from the same university.
Elisabeth has served as academic advisor for undergraduates and international students, mentor of the Spanish cluster in the Intercultural Living Exchange Program, teacher trainer for the TESOL Certificate Program at the English Language Center. She participated as a professor and course designer of Introduction to Intercultural Communication in the Scholarship 2007 inaugural voyage, an international study program aboard a vessel travelling around the world. She is also an intercultural trainer and has extensively presented and designed workshops to raise cultural awareness and develop intercultural competence as part of the teacher trainer programs. Elisabeth is a board member of SIETAR Baltimore (Society for the Intercultural Education, Training, and Research) and Alpha Delta Kappa, an international honorary organization of women educators dedicated to educational excellence, altruism, and world understanding.