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Communicative Language Teaching in Action: Putting Principles to Work

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Amazon.com: Communicative Language Teaching in Action: Putting Principles to Work: 9781793512314: Brandl, Klaus: Books

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The Texas Language Center supports, enhances, and promotes the teaching of languages at the University of Texas at Austin. The Center offers services that facilitate language teaching of all levels through courses, professional seminars, and coordination with home department courses. The TLC also promotes professionalization of language teaching staff through funded research, training, and course development.

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The emergence of a new tool called ChatGPT, which uses increasingly popular artificial intelligence and chatbot technology to generate human-like, long-form writing, has raised new questions and concerns in higher education about how to adapt moving forward. Here are 5 things to know about ChatGPT...

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The Center for
Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
(CARLA)
is a Title VI Language Resource Center devoted to improving language teaching and learning.

INITIATIVES

CARLA is currently carrying out the following initiatives:

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

CARLA supports the professional development of second language teachers through institutes, workshops, and conferences.

NEW AT CARLA
Language Teacher Education Conference-Call for Proposals
The 12th International Language Teacher Education Conference welcomes proposals for proposals for papers, symposia, discussion sessions, and posters on all aspects of the education and professional development of language teachers.

Learn more on the Call for Proposals webpage.

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The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA)

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CARLA is one of the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI National Language Resource Centers, whose role is to improve the nation's capacity to teach and learn foreign languages.

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Radio Arlecchino : Italian Grammar and Culture Podcast : Welcome!

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Radio Arlecchino provides mp3 podcast lessons that illustrate specific Italian grammar points. Grammar examples and dialogs are built upon the escapades of Arlecchino, Pulcinella, and other masks of the Italian Commedia dell'arte.

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Texan Italian Lifestyle | Texas USA | ITAL Channel

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Texan Italian Lifestyle | Texas USA | ITAL Channel

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Learn italian language and transcultural competence Italian. Home to ITAL channel. Texan Italian storytelling through award winning educational videos, films, documentaries and more. Creators of Tiramisu for Two.

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Enhancing and expanding multilingual and multicultural education worldwide

ACTFL is an individual membership organization of thousands of language educators and administrators from elementary through graduate education, as well as government and industry.

Respect and Recognition

Powering the future of language education

ACTFL's resources, backed by sound research and decades of experience ensure you have the tools to deliver successful instruction.

Assessments

Learn why ACTFL assessments are considered the gold standard for assessing performance and proficiency by institutions, companies, and governments.

Educator Resources

Explore ACTFL's Proficiency Guidelines, Can-Do Statements, and more to help guide your strategy and practice.

Access ACTFL Publications

Read The Language Educator (TLE), Foreign Language Annals (FLA), and ACTFL books to get timely information on WL education trends and technology.

Professional Development

ACTFL offers a variety of methods to advance professional development to help you, your school or district succeed.

Certifications

ACTFL offers a variety of training and certification programs designed to meet the needs of world language educators, researchers, and administrators.

Career Development

Mentoring, volunteering, and many other programs to support your career journey. From new teachers to seasoned professionals, we're here for you.

Language education provides tangible benefits. The research proves it.

Did you know that language learning boosts academic achievement, provides cognitive benefits and promotes positive attitudes and beliefs about other languages and cultures? See what the research says.

ACTFLearn Central

On-demand Courses

Your gateway to online on-demand professional development courses

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world language teaching; language assessment; foreign language teaching

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Enhancing and expanding multilingual and multicultural education worldwide

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Language Teaching and Learning Materials

Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL)
The University of Texas at Austin * 158 W 21st St
Mail Stop B3500 * Mezes Hall 2.126 * Austin, TX 78712 * (512) 232-2312 * coerll@austin.utexas.edu
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Language Teaching and Learning Materials Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) The University of Texas at Austin * 158 W 21st St Mail Stop B3500 * Mezes Hall 2.126 * Austin, TX 78712 * (512) 232-2312 * coerll@austin.utexas.edu Web Accessibility * Privacy

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Foreign Language Teaching Methods (COERLL)

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Foreign Language Teaching Methods (COERLL)

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About the Site

Foreign Language Teaching Methods focuses on 12 different aspects of language teaching, each taught by a different expert instructor. The site contains video footage from an actual methods course held at the University of Texas at Austin. This flexible resource is designed to be used by foreign language teachers as a component of a classroom methods course or as a stand-alone course for independent learners.

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Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning, The University of Texas at Austin

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Foreign Language Teaching Methods focuses on 12 different aspects of language teaching, each taught by a different expert instructor. The site contains video footage from an actual methods course held at the University of Texas at Austin.

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InterCom is a weekly email digest that offers just-in-time information in easy-to-digest portions. It is customizable by target language, level, and content area (such as curriculum, professional development, or assessment), so you receive only the information that matters to you.

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Faculty and administrative positions at colleges and universities. Now listing 51,369 jobs. Updated daily. Free to job seekers.

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The* call-in talk show with a touch of comedy for those interested in second language acquisition and language teaching. Hosted by Bill VanPatten and the Center for Language Teaching Advancement at Michigan State University.

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University of Texas at Austin Canvas Learning Management System

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Access Canvas, get training, find support, look-up grades, and download apps. Students and faculty use canvas to complete and administer course materials.

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The Texas Language Center supports, enhances, and promotes the teaching of languages at the University of Texas at Austin. The Center offers services that facilitate language teaching of all levels through courses, professional seminars, and coordination with home department courses. The TLC also promotes professionalization of language teaching staff through funded research, training, and course development.

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Dr. Antonietta Di Pietro, AP Italian Instructor at G.W. Carver International Studies Program, Lecturer of Italian at Florida International University, and current Executive Board Member for High Schools (2018-2020) of the American Association of Teachers of Italian has been awarded the Distinguished Service Award for K-12 for 2018.

Di Pietro is a long-term active-researcher in Language Acquisition and busier practitioner of teaching Italian on numerous levels, from high school to college. She has demonstrated her dedication and interest to the field through her various certifications for the teaching, curricular design, and assessment of Italian as a non-native language in the United States. In fact, Dr. Di Pietro is an ACTFL certified OPI and OPIc Proficiency Interview Tester, a College Board AP Italian consultant, AP Italian Question Leader during the rating, along with being a consultant on other nationally recognized Italian examinations. Currently, she is the High School Co-chair of the AP Italian Development Committee, where she works diligently to write a thought-provoking examination.

Besides being an active language teacher on both the high school and college levels, along with other fields in the Humanities, Dr. DiPietro actively presents at conferences and has reviewed books in the field of History. In addition to his scholarly contributions, she is also the President of the Florida Association of Teachers of Italian (FATI), where she has organized events aimed at the promotion of teaching Italian.As one of her recommenders has noted:

what makes Dr. Di Pietro most deserving of our award are the constructive and collaborative spirit, the sense of vision and leadership, and the personal investment she shows to each student, colleague and committee with whom she works. These attributes are often instinctive, vocation-like traits for unsung heroes.

Thus, Di Pietro not only serves as an amazing language instructor and colleague, but also as an ambassador for the greater good of Italian Studies, a role which is becoming increasingly difficult to fill in contemporary society.

Dr. Di Pietro's passion, dedication, and creativity make her stand out as a distinguished member of our community. Her influence on Italian Studies will be felt by students, colleagues, and future teachers within the field.

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American Association of Teachers of Italian |

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Dr. Antonietta Di Pietro, AP Italian Instructor at G.W. Carver International Studies Program, Lecturer of Italian at Florida International University, and current Executive Board Member for High Schools (2018-2020) of the American Association of Teachers of Italian has been awarded the Distinguished Service Award for K-12 for 2018.

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Sometimes you just need a tip! We continually work with instructors to record small bits of practical advice that may be just what you've been thinking about. Explore this collection that covers everything from the first day of class to final student presentations and many topics in between. You may not have time to read an article or attend a workshop, but we hope these can spark new ideas.

Take me there

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Sometimes you just need a tip! We continually work with instructors to record small bits of practical advice that may be just what you've been thinking about. Explore this collection that covers everything from the first day of class to final student presentations and many topics in between.

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UT College of Liberal Arts: UT College of Liberal Arts

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"Multiliteracies" and "Learning by Design": Meaning Making and Literacy Learning in the Era of Digital Text | COERLL

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This presentation will provide a theoretical overview of the notion of Multiliteracies, discussing developments since the idea was first proposed in the mid 1990s. The "multi" part of the term refers to two dimensions: the multimodality of meaning, particularly in digital media, and the increasing divergence of the socially distinctive forms of text.

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National Foreign Language Resource Centers (NFLRC)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A web Portal for the fifteen Foreign Language Resource Centers (LRCs), which provides a searchable database to all of the LRC materials, resources, and professional development opportunities.

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The only professional association devoted to the needs of French teachers at all levels, the AATF strives to advance the study of the French language and French-speaking literatures and cultures. Membership is open to anyone over the age of 18.

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This report of the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages was originally published in 2007 in Profession.

Background

The Modern Language Association supports a broad, intellectually driven approach to teaching language and culture in higher education. To study the best ways of implementing this approach in today's world, the MLA Executive Council established an Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, chaired by Mary Louise Pratt, who served as the association's president in 2003. The committee was charged with examining the current language crisis that has occurred as a result of 9/11 and with considering the effects of this crisis on the teaching of foreign languages in colleges and universities. It began working in 2004 and submitted its report to the Executive Council two years later. Committee members have made presentations at the MLA convention and at other public venues, including events sponsored by federal agencies, professional associations, and universities. This summary of the committee's and the Executive Council's deliberations offers background and context for the association's recommendations regarding the challenges and opportunities facing language study in higher education. While the recommendations address issues specific to the United States, they may be applicable to other contexts and countries.

In fulfilling its charge, the committee found itself immersed in a dynamic, rapidly changing environment marked by a sense of crisis around what came to be called the nation's language deficit. The United States' inability to communicate with or comprehend other parts of the world became a prominent subject for journalists, as language failures of all kinds plagued the United States' military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq and its efforts to suppress terrorism. Initiatives in critical languages began multiplying in educational institutions all over the United States. Government language schools scrambled to redefine priorities and mount new programs. New federal funds for language study appeared, most tied to defense and security needs. MLA data show that college and university enrollments in Arabic nearly doubled between 1998 and 2002, from 5,505 to 10,584 (Welles 9, table 1a). Shortages of qualified, trained teachers of critical languages became more acute than ever before. Legislative proposals to address the deficit in language and international expertise began appearing in Congress.

Not surprisingly, "the need to understand other cultures and languages" was identified by Daniel Yankelovich as one of five imperative needs to which higher education must respond in the next ten years if it is to remain relevant. "Our whole culture," Yankelovich says, "must become less ethnocentric, less patronizing, less ignorant of others, less Manichaean in judging other cultures, and more at home with the rest of the world. Higher education can do a lot to meet that important challenge." In May 2005 Senator Daniel Akaka made a similar point: "Americans need to be open to the world; we need to be able to see the world through the eyes of others if we are going to understand how to resolve the complex problems we face." In the current geopolitical moment, these statements are no longer clichés. The MLA is prepared to lead the way in the reorganization of language and cultural education around these objectives.

In the context of globalization and in the post-9/11 environment, then, the usefulness of studying languages other than English is no longer contested. The goals and means of language study, however, continue to be hotly debated. Divergent views concerning language and its many functions are reflected in differing approaches to the study of language. At one end, language is considered to be principally instrumental, a skill to use for communicating thought and information. At the opposite end, language is understood as an essential element of a human being's thought processes, perceptions, and self-expressions; and as such it is considered to be at the core of translingual and transcultural competence. While we use language to communicate our needs to others, language simultaneously reveals us to others and to ourselves. Language is a complex multifunctional phenomenon that links an individual to other individuals, to communities, and to national cultures.

Institutional missions and teaching approaches typically reflect either the instrumentalist or the constitutive view of language. Freestanding language schools and some campus language-resource centers often embrace an instrumentalist focus to support the needs of the students they serve, whereas university and college foreign language departments tend to emphasize the constitutive aspect of language and its relation to cultural and literary traditions, cognitive structures, and historical knowledge. Culture is represented not only in events, texts, buildings, artworks, cuisines, and many other artifacts but also in language itself. Expressions such as "the pursuit of happiness," "liberté, égalité, fraternité," and "la Raza" connote cultural dimensions that extend well beyond their immediate translation. As recent world events have demonstrated, deep cultural knowledge and linguistic competence are equally necessary if one wishes to understand people and their communities.

Transforming Academic Programs

National defense and security agendas, which often arise during times of crisis, tend to focus the goals of language study narrowly. The standard configuration of university foreign language curricula, in which a two- or three-year language sequence feeds into a set of core courses primarily focused on canonical literature, also represents a narrow model. This configuration defines both the curriculum and the governance structure of language departments and creates a division between the language curriculum and the literature curriculum and between tenure-track literature professors and language instructors in non-tenure-track positions. At doctorate-granting institutions, cooperation or even exchange between the two groups is usually minimal or nonexistent. Foreign language instructors often work entirely outside departmental power structures and have little or no say in the educational mission of their department, even in areas where they have particular expertise. Although we focus here on conditions that prevail in foreign language and literature programs, we also note that the two-tiered system exists elsewhere in the humanities-in English programs, for example, where composition and literary studies are frequently dissociated in parallel structural ways.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the frustration this rigid and hierarchical model evokes among language specialists who work under its conditions. Their antagonism is not toward the study of literature-far from it-but toward the organization of literary study in a way that monopolizes the upper-division curriculum, devalues the early years of language learning, and impedes the development of a unified language-and-content curriculum across the four-year college or university sequence. This two-track model endows one set of language professionals not only with autonomy in designing their curricula but also with the power to set the goals that the other set of professionals must pursue. In this model, humanists do research while language specialists provide technical support and basic training. The more autonomous group-the literature faculty-may find it difficult to see the advantages of sharing some of its decision-making power over the curriculum as a whole. We hope to convince this group that it is in our common interest to devise new models.

The two-tiered configuration has outlived its usefulness and needs to evolve. The critical moment in which language departments find themselves is therefore also an opportunity. Many factors in the world today make advanced study of languages and cultures appealing to students and vital to society. Replacing the two-tiered language-literature structure with a broader and more coherent curriculum in which language, culture, and literature are taught as a continuous whole, supported by alliances with other departments and expressed through interdisciplinary courses, will reinvigorate language departments as valuable academic units central to the humanities and to the missions of institutions of higher learning. In our view, foreign language departments, if they are to be meaningful players in higher education-or, indeed, if they are to thrive as autonomous units-must transform their programs and structure. This idea builds directly on a transformation that has already taken place in the profession. In their individual scholarly pursuits and in their pedagogical practices, foreign language faculty members have been working in creative ways to cross disciplinary boundaries, incorporate the study of all kinds of material in addition to the strictly literary, and promote wide cultural understanding through research and teaching. It is time for all language programs in all institutions to reflect this transformation.

The Goal: Translingual and Transcultural Competence

The language major should be structured to produce a specific outcome: educated speakers who have deep translingual and transcultural competence. Advanced language training often seeks to replicate the competence of an educated native speaker, a goal that postadolescent learners rarely reach. The idea of translingual and transcultural competence, in contrast, places value on the ability to operate between languages. Students are educated to function as informed and capable interlocutors with educated native speakers in the target language. They are also trained to reflect on the world and themselves through the lens of another language and culture. They learn to comprehend speakers of the target language as members of foreign societies and to grasp themselves as Americans-that is, as members of a society that is foreign to others. They also learn to relate to fellow members of their own society who speak languages other than English.

This kind of foreign language education systematically teaches differences in meaning, mentality, and worldview as expressed in American English and in the target language. Literature, film, and other media are used to challenge students' imaginations and to help them consider alternative ways of seeing, feeling, and understanding things. In the course of acquiring functional language abilities, students are taught critical language awareness, interpretation and translation, historical and political consciousness, social sensibility, and aesthetic perception. They acquire a basic knowledge of the history, geography, culture, and literature of the society or societies whose language they are learning; the ability to understand and interpret its radio, television, and print media; and the capacity to do research in the language using parameters specific to the target culture.

An Integrative Approach with Multiple Paths to the Major

The kind of curricular reform we suggest will situate language study in cultural, historical, geographic, and cross-cultural frames within the context of humanistic learning. We expect that more students will continue language study if courses incorporate cultural inquiry at all levels and if advanced courses address more subject areas. This means faculty members will have the opportunity to bring into the classroom the full breadth of their knowledge of the society about which they teach, including that society's languages and language variants, literatures, and cultures. Many colleges and universities have made a successful transition toward this broad understanding of language study, and we urge others to follow.

One possible model defines transcultural understanding as the ability to comprehend and analyze the cultural narratives that appear in every kind of expressive form-from essays, fiction, poetry, drama, journalism, humor, advertising, political rhetoric, and legal documents to performance, visual forms, and music. According to this model, which we present only as an example, to read a cultural narrative a student should:

Achieve enough proficiency in the language to converse with educated native speakers on a level that allows both linguistic exchanges and metalinguistic exchanges (that is, discussion about the language itself).

Have a solid command as well as an analytic knowledge of specific metaphors and key terms that inform culture.

Understand how a particular background reality is reestablished on a daily basis through cultural subsystems such as:

the mass media

literary and artistic works as projection and investigation of a nation's self-understanding

the social and historical narratives in literary texts, artistic works, the legal system, the political system, the educational system, the economic system, and the social welfare system

local instances of major scientific and scholarly paradigms

sports or other leisure activities, the cultural metaphors these have created, and their relation to the national imagination

stereotypes, of both self and others, as they are developed and negotiated through texts

symbols or sites of memory in the broadest sense, including buildings, historical figures, popular heroes, monuments, currency, culture-specific products, literary and artistic canons, landscapes, fashion, and cuisine

major competing traditions such as views of the nation that are secularist or fundamentalist or religious

local historiography

Language departments will need to undertake a similar mapping of content to produce unified, four-year curricula that situate language study in cultural, historical, geographic, and cross-cultural frames; that systematically incorporate transcultural content and translingual reflection at every level; and that organize the major around explicit, principled educational goals and expected outcomes. A curriculum should consist of a series of complementary or linked courses that holistically incorporate content and cross-cultural reflection at every level.

Only 6.1% of college graduates whose first major is foreign languages go on to attain a doctoral degree (Natl. Science Foundation); for those students and for others who enjoy literary studies, one path to the major should be through literature. But to attract students from other fields and students with interests beyond literary studies, particularly students returning from a semester or a year abroad, departments should institute courses that address a broad range of curricular needs. Most students studying abroad do not major in departments of languages and literatures, but they can be drawn to courses where they continue to develop their language skills and enrich their cultural knowledge. Interdisciplinary collaborative courses could fulfill both the needs of the students and the goals of the institution's program. Interdisciplinary courses are typically taught in English, but a credit-bearing discussion module taught in the target language can be added with the support of programs such as foreign languages across the curriculum. More important, faculty members participating in team-taught courses could be encouraged to lead these discussion sessions as part of their teaching load. This approach should appeal to administrators who wish to promote interdisciplinary courses, particularly those taught by several faculty members. Focused, for instance, on a period, an issue, or a literary genre, these courses would present an in-depth study of cross-cultural influences. Examples include courses on the Crusades in the Middle Ages; the Silk Road; literature and opera; the sonnet across four national literatures; turn-of-the-century Vienna, Paris, and London; literature and science; and interconnections between Germany and the United States. In addition to attracting majors from other disciplines, such interdisciplinary team-taught courses would encourage learning communities, forge alliances among departments, and counter the isolation and marginalization that language and literature departments often experience on American campuses. To those who may think it unrealistic to expect collaboration involving language and literature teaching, we would point out that strategies in place at many institutions, like team teaching and linked courses, prove that such collaboration works.

Collaboration and Governance: Transforming the Two-Tiered System

The new courses and programs we recommend should not be developed exclusively by tenure-track scholars trained primarily in literature. The work of revamping and unifying the language department curriculum can only be carried out through a sustained collaboration among all members of the teaching corps, including tenure-line faculty members and those with contingent and long-term appointments in all related fields, such as linguistics, literature, and language pedagogy. Faculty members trained in fields such as media, area studies, performance studies, film, religion, and art history are increasingly part of foreign language department hiring patterns. This trend, along with joint appointments between language departments and related departments and programs, supports the kind of change proposed here.

The presence of linguists and second language acquisition specialists on language department faculties is also an essential part of this vision. Linguists enrich the foreign language major through their ability to offer courses in second language acquisition, applied linguistics, dialectology, sociolinguistics, history of the language, and discourse analysis. In addition to learning the history and underlying structure of a particular language, students should be offered the opportunity to take general courses in such areas as language and cognition, language and power, bilingualism, language and identity, language and gender, language and myth, language and artificial intelligence, and language and the imagination. These courses appeal broadly to students who major in languages as well as to those who do not.

Research indicates that in doctoral-granting departments, the teaching of first-year language courses breaks down as follows: full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty members teach 7.4% of first-year courses, full-time non-tenure-track faculty members teach 19.6%, part-time instructors teach 15.7%, and graduate student teaching assistants teach 57.4%. (Other undergraduate courses are taught by a much higher percentage of tenure-line faculty members in doctorate-granting departments [40.3 %].) In BA-granting departments, the breakdown is as follows: full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty members teach 41.8% of first-year courses, full-time non-tenure-track faculty members teach 21.1%, part-time instructors teach 34.7%, and graduate student teaching assistants teach 2.4% (Laurence 216, table 3b). It is clear that a redesigned curriculum is a key step in creating an integrated departmental administrative structure in which all members contribute to defining and carrying out a shared educational mission. While language faculty members are expected to use methodologies that develop students' competencies in reading, writing, and oral expression as preparation for upper-level courses, it is crucial that tenure-line faculty members have a hand in teaching language courses and in shaping and overseeing the content and teaching approaches used throughout the curriculum, from the first year forward. This vision requires departments, in both tenure-track and non-tenure-track searches, to look for instructors who are able to develop and teach broad-based courses aimed at producing the translingual and transcultural competencies described above.

This transformation of curriculum and departmental governance is by far the most important recommendation made by the Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages. In many colleges and universities, language departments have been experimenting with change for some time, and their experience can benefit us all. Unless this kind and degree of change happens over the next ten years, college and university departments of foreign languages will not be in a position to provide leadership in advanced language education. Lack of change will most likely carry serious consequences for both higher education and language learning. Language learning might migrate to training facilities, where instrumental learning will eclipse the deep intellectual and cultural learning that takes place on college campuses.

The changes we foresee in the undergraduate curriculum call for changes in the way graduate studies are structured as well. To meet the needs of undergraduate language programs (which is where the majority of PhD candidates will find employment), graduate studies should provide substantive training in language teaching and in the use of new technologies in addition to cultivating extensive disciplinary knowledge and strong analytic and writing skills. The goals we endorse may be difficult to achieve in some quarters, but they promise to reinvigorate our discipline and our institutions and to reassert the relevance and centrality of language faculty members in shaping the academy.

Strengthening the Demand for Language Competence within the University

The lack of foreign language competence is as much a fact within academic disciplines as in the society at large. According to a recent MLA survey, only half of the 118 existing PhD programs in English require reading knowledge of two additional languages (Steward 211, table 1). At the graduate level, language requirements are notoriously underenforced across the humanities and the social sciences. Citation indexes reveal a steady decrease in the use of non-English sources in research across the humanities and social sciences, a deficiency that impoverishes intellectual debate. Four-year language majors often graduate with disappointingly low levels of linguistic ability. Opportunities to study abroad and to do course work in the target language are eroding in favor of short-term study in which courses are in English. In addition, the need to work prevents many students from studying abroad at all.

We recommend that institutions take the following steps:

Encourage departments to set clear standards of achievement for undergraduate majors in speaking, reading, writing, and comprehension and to develop the programming necessary to meet these standards.

Establish language requirements (or levels of competence) for undergraduate students majoring in fields such as international studies, history, anthropology, music, art history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and linguistics, as well as for students preparing for careers in law, medicine, and engineering.

Encourage departments to enforce language requirements in doctoral programs and to provide courses that enable students both to acquire genuinely usable linguistic skills and to apply those skills in research.

Work with colleagues in the social sciences and in policy-oriented departments to strengthen language requirements in the design of their majors and graduate programs and encourage these colleagues to recognize the limits monolingualism imposes on research.

Enhance and reward graduate student training in languages and in language teaching. Teach graduate students to use technology in language instruction and learning. Ensure that doctoral programs include funding for research abroad and language work.

Encourage foundations to insist on language expertise when projects require it and to fund language acquisition when it is needed for research purposes; that is, make it possible to build language learning into a grant application.

Promote faculty learning of new languages and increased competence in languages already in use. Encourage administrations to fund tutors or subsidize summers abroad for faculty members whose research projects call for language expertise. Encourage the National Endowment for the Humanities and other granting organizations to make fellowships available for this purpose.

Continuing Priorities

The time is right for this transforming approach to language and culture study in higher education. Classroom study and study abroad should be promoted as interdependent necessities: the classroom is an ideal place for structured learning that first sets the stage and later reinforces and builds on learning absorbed in study abroad. Yet the language deficiency that is prevalent in the United States cannot be solved at the college level alone. While learning another language is possible at any age, learning languages other than English must be included in the earliest years of the K-12 system if the United States is to have a citizenry capable of communicating with educated native speakers in their language. To these ends, we continue to advocate the following priorities for language departments and programs:

Promote alliances between K-12 educators and college and university faculty members to strengthen language learning at all levels and to foster collaboration.

Develop programs for gifted learners, especially in the precollegiate years. Push for enriched, intensified programs for those learners on college campuses.

Broaden the range of languages taught. In particular, add locally spoken languages to the curriculum. Seek out heritage learners and design a curriculum that meets their needs. Encourage heritage speakers to learn additional languages.

Adopt and promote best practices for heritage-language teaching such as those developed by the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Develop programs in translation and interpretation. There is a great unmet demand for educated translators and interpreters, and translation is an ideal context for developing translingual and transcultural abilities as an organizing principle of the language curriculum.

Develop intensive courses and, whenever possible, language-intensive or immersion semesters during which students take multiple courses in the major simultaneously.

Insist on study abroad whenever possible and require courses in the target language. Push administrators to develop financial aid support for study abroad. Provide appropriate courses for students returning from abroad.

Increase the number of guest speakers on campus who lecture in languages other than English.

Make sure campus media centers feature television programs and newspapers in languages other than English. Feature (subtitled) foreign language films for broad campus audiences.

Through a language center or other structure, develop a forum for the exchange of ideas and expertise among language instructors from all departments. Such structures prove invaluable in boosting the morale of teachers and improving the quality of professional and intellectual life.

Going Forward

Following its long tradition of support for foreign language teaching, the MLA is committed to ensuring that the recommendations in this report are widely disseminated and have every opportunity to succeed in practice. The association is in a unique position to provide research and analysis for the field, to bring together department chairs to discuss ideas for curricular transformation, to create a bank of resources for the profession, and to make profound connections among language-teaching professionals at all levels as well as among local, state, and federal entities that have a role in shaping how language programs are structured and funded. The MLA Executive Council will formulate plans to assist those who are willing to put our recommendations into practice in devising new structures for foreign language departments. As we go forward, the MLA will continue to work with other scholarly and professional associations to articulate common interests and to strengthen our collective mission of paving the way toward a multilingual future for students in the higher education system in the United States.

Members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages:

Michael Geisler, Dean of Language Schools and Schools Abroad, Middlebury College

Claire Kramsch, Professor of German and Foreign Language Acquisition, University of California, Berkeley

Scott McGinnis, Academic Advisor and Associate Professor, Defense Language Institute, Washington Office

Peter Patrikis, Executive Director, Winston Churchill Foundation

Mary Louise Pratt (Chair), Silver Professor, New York University

Karin Ryding, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Arabic and Linguistics, Georgetown University

Haun Saussy, Bird White Housum Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University

Background Information on Languages in the MLA

The MLA constitution defines the association's purpose as follows: "to promote study, criticism, and research in the more and less commonly taught modern languages and their literatures and to further the common interests of teachers of these subjects." The MLA's activities for the most part have focused on the major and minor European languages and their literatures, although recent initiatives have increased engagement with the languages of Asia and the Middle East. Approximately two-thirds of MLA members work in English-language-based studies; this proportion has remained steady for some years. With regard to institutional membership in the Association of Departments of English (ADE) and the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL), language departments slightly outnumber English departments. In 2006 the ADFL had 892 member departments, while the ADE had 747 such members. Departments of foreign languages, especially those that house a single language, tend to have fewer faculty members than departments of English. Of the 85 MLA divisions in 2006, 20 are identified specifically with English and 28 with languages other than English; 37 are unmarked as to language. Of the 48 discussion groups, 8 are specific to English and 22 are specific to languages other than English; 18 are unmarked as to language. Twelve languages and 8 language groups are represented in the discussion groups. Among the 107 allied organizations of the MLA, 50 are specific to English, 30 are identified with languages other than English, and 27 are not marked as to language. In the employment arena, about half the positions advertised in the MLA Job Information List are in language departments, and about half of these are in Spanish.

Works Cited

Akaka, Daniel Kahikina. "Remarks before the National Council for Languages and International Studies." Daniel Kahikina Akaka, U.S. Senator for Hawaii. 19 May 2005. United States Senate. 22 May 2007 <http://akaka.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=speeches.home&month=5&year=2005&release_id=368>.

Laurence, David. "The 1999 MLA Survey of Staffing in English and Foreign Language Departments." Profession 2001. New York: MLA, 2001. 211-24.

National Science Foundation. Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System. 2003 National Survey of College Graduates. 19 Mar. 2007 < http://sestat.nsf.gov>.

Steward, Doug. "The Foreign Language Requirement in English Doctoral Programs." Profession 2006. New York: MLA, 2006. 203-18.

Welles, Elizabeth. "Foreign Language Enrollments in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2002." ADFL Bulletin 35.2-3 (2004): 7-26.

Yankelovich, Daniel. "Ferment and Change: Higher Education in 2015." Chronicle of Higher Education 25 Nov. 2005: 14.

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Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a...

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This report of the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages was originally published in 2007 in Profession. The Modern Language Association supports a broad, intellectually driven approach to teaching language and culture in higher education.

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CALICO (Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium) is devoted to research and development of technology in second language acquisition.

CALICO, the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium is an international organization dedicated to research and development in the use of computer technology in language learning: computer-assisted language learning (CALL).

CALICO began mainly as a group of people interested in using and producing technology-based materials for second/foreign language teaching. After more than 25 years of growth and experience, CALICO now includes language educators, programmers, technicians, web page designers, CALL developers, CALL practitioners, and second language acquisition researchers-anyone interested in exploring the use of technology for language teaching and learning.

Important Links:

CALICO Journal
CALICO 2018: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, May 29-June 2. Proposal submissions deadline October 27, 2017.

Letter from CALICO's President, Fall 2016

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CALICO (Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium) is devoted to research and development of technology in second language acquisition. CALICO, the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium is an international organization dedicated to research and development in the use of computer technology in language learning: computer-assisted language learning (CALL).

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What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

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What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

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Foreign Languages & the Literary in the Everyday - helping students to make meaning

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beginning of content:

Below is a diverse selection of supplemental materials, including lesson plans and teaching strategies, from the College Board and your AP colleagues. Look for more classroom resources in the AP Teacher Community.

From The College Board

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AP French Language and Culture: Classroom Resources | AP Central - The College Board

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Below is a diverse selection of supplemental materials, including lesson plans and teaching strategies, from the College Board and your AP colleagues. Look for more classroom resources in the AP Teacher Community. From The College Board

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Succinct but thorough summaries of teaching methods with video demonstrations produced by BYU

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Grammar-Translation Method Audio-Lingual Method Cognitive Approach Total Physical Response Natural Approach Communicative Language Teaching TPR Storytelling Content-Based Instruction Task-Based Instruction Lexical Approach

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Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR)

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The self-assessment that is a central feature of the European Language Portfolio (ELP) provides the essential link between the ELP and the CEFR. Self-assessment is carried out using checklists of "I can" descriptors arranged by language activity and common reference level (language biography) and summarized with reference to the CEFR's self-assessment grid (language passport).

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Mon Quotidien, le seul journal d’actualité pour les enfants de 10-14 ans

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Nous utilisons des cookies, y compris des cookies tiers, à des fins de fonctionnement, d’analyses statistiques, de personnalisation de votre expérience, afin de vous proposer des contenus ciblés adaptés à vos centres d’intérêts et analyser la performance de nos campagnes publicitaires. Configurer les cookies

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In Spring 2016, the Graduate Student Development (GSD) team administered a survey to all graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). This report describes the experiences and perceptions of teaching training and preparation of graduate students at UT.

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The program is open to all registered undergraduate and graduate students of UT and to students in good standing from other universities or colleges who register at UT for the summer session. Two UT French faculty members accompany the group. Depending on enrollments, the group may also be accompanied by a graduate assistant from the department.

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Second Language Teaching Methods - CAL Resource Guide Online

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The following publications, Web sites, and listservs offer additional information about second language teaching methodology. This Resource Guide concludes with an annotated bibliography of ERIC documents on this topic.

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Language Learning: A National Priority | Lead with Languages

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Discover the benefits of learning another language, then join our Foreign Language Enrollment Drive campaign on social media to share with your network that you've enrolled in a language class!

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The Toulouse Intermediate French summer program is a 9-week program over the summer semester. Students earn credit for 6 hours of French course work and 3 hours of Art History coursework. Students attend classes with French instructors at the University of Toulouse Jean-Jaures campus, located in central Toulouse in Southern France.

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There’s never a bad time to re-examine and rethink your syllabus. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know to craft an effective one.

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As an AP French teacher, you're always working against the clock.

But that doesn't mean you have to sacrifice creativity for efficiency.

In fact, the designated course themes lend themselves very well to creative and efficient French teaching.

New to teaching AP French?

Or just want to improve your curriculum?

Well, look no further! In this blog post, we'll look at how to teach the six AP French themes in a way that makes them engaging and unforgettable.

Below, you can check out a creative sample curriculum to give you ideas about how to adapt each theme to suit your purposes, expand your students' world outlook and increase their language proficiency.

For example, what about using the Discoveries and Inventions sub-theme in Science and Technology to brainstorm solutions to Global Challenges? Or better yet, using the Visual Arts sub-theme in Beauty and Aesthetics to explore how environmentally-friendly architecture could present a solution to a global problem?

The possibilities are endless, and how you use them is up to you!

A Quick Intro to Teaching an AP French Course

As any teachers reading this probably already know, an AP French course is equivalent to an intermediate college-level course and allows students to earn credits towards college or advanced placement.

An AP course is excellent for many reasons. Here are just a few:

It aims to improve proficiency in the modes of communication set out in the national standards for language teaching: interpretive (understanding), interpersonal (exchanging information) and presentational (speaking and writing).

It fosters cultural awareness.

It offers six interesting and inter-related themes with several sub-themes that cover a variety of topics.

These six interdisciplinary themes facilitate and promote the use of the language in different contexts.

I think that focusing on the AP French themes creates an excellent opportunity for you, as a teacher, to help your students expand their worldview, improve their cultural awareness and learn new vocabulary and constructions as they discuss new topics. Incorporating literature into your course as a means of doing all this is highly recommended.

Another resource that's a gold mine for putting together an AP French curriculum is FluentU. FluentU takes real-world videos-like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks-and turns them into personalized language learning lessons. You can easily find videos related to any of the six themes, such as "Global Warming" (Global Challenges), "If You Don't Have an iPhone" (Science and Technology) and "In the Art Gallery" (Beauty and Aesthetics).

Theme 5: Families and Communities (La famille et la communauté): This theme is great for discussing and comparing family structures and communities around the world or through the centuries.

In this blog post, I am going to go over the six AP French themes and then offer a sample syllabus in order to show you how you can best profit from teaching creatively.

What Are the AP French Themes?

The six AP themes and all their sub-themes are listed here.

A Sample Syllabus Based on the 6 AP French Themes
Sub-theme: Environmental Issues (L'environnement)
Here is a proposed sample syllabus based on the six AP themes. If you decide to use it in your class, the order in which you decide to teach it is up to you, as the syllabus is very flexible, so whether you start with Theme 1 or Theme 6 does not affect the end result.

Study vocabulary related to nature and the environment: e.g., air pollué (polluted air), approvisionnement en eau (water supply), l'environnement (the environment), l'empreinte carbone (carbon footprint), biodiversité (biodiversity), déchets ménagers (domestic waste), le réchauffement climatique (global warming), etc.

Have regular quizzes on whatever vocabulary you select.

What are the global threats facing us?
Activities:
Read and analyze articles on the environment and global threats in French newspapers and/or magazines such as , etc.

The TV5MONDE site provides video clips and worksheets about many topics (you have a choice of B1 or B2 as a level). You can show one of two clips or both: "L'hymne de nos campagnes" ("The hymn of our countryside") and "Des îles de déchets" ("Islands of waste"). Both activities offer a teacher's and student's worksheet as well as the transcription of the text. This exercise ties in with the introduction of vocabulary and can lead to a discussion or debate on a pressing global threat.

Hand out the text entitled "L'homme-le plus grand ennemi de la planète" ("Man-the planet's worst enemy") and use it both as a comprehension exercise (there are questions at the bottom), and a translation exercise if you have the time. You can also use it to discuss one of the five suggested topics or give the students another related topic to research such as le Protocole de Kyoto (the Kyoto Protocol).

Ask students to write an article or an email on what they think is the most pressing environmental threat.

Have regular quizzes on the new vocabulary.

Review prepositions. This will be useful when you say things like C'est une invention de... (It is an invention of...) or avant l'ère des ordinateurs... (before the computer era...), etc.

What is the effect of technology and science on our lives?
Activities:
Give students time to research the invention of a Francophone scientist and then write an essay on it. Or ask them to describe an invention orally.

Get the students to describe a famous French/Francophone inventor. Alternately, they could do a project on three different famous inventors.
Sub-theme: Holidays and Celebrations (Les fêtes)
Organize a debate on nuclear energy or any other scientific innovation.

Review vocabulary to do with holidays and celebrations.

Give quizzes on it.

How does society and how do individuals define quality of life?
Activities:
Compare holidays and celebrations in the US and France or France and any other country. TV5MONDE offers a page from which you can search holidays according to continent, month, religion and other factors.

Compare customs and traditions around the world in an essay (e.g., meals at Christmas).
Sub-theme: Multiculturalism (Le pluriculturalisme)
Discuss how each student celebrates a particular holiday.

Introduce vocabulary to do with immigration, alienation and multiculturalism.

Give quizzes on the above vocabulary.

How is identity influenced by culture and language?
Activities:
Ask students to explain what multiculturalism is.

Discuss multiculturalism after reading an article on it.
Sub-theme: Family Structures (La famille)
Have students write an essay on multiculturalism in their country.

Have vocabulary quizzes on the above.

Review adjectives and adverbs for describing people and family members.

What constitutes a family?
Activities:
Read or listen to Guy de Maupassant's short story "Aux Champs" ("In/to the Fields") with your students and ask them to compare a contemporary family with a 19th-century family.

Have students write an essay describing their family tree and bring in a family photo which they must then describe in detail using adjectives and adverbs, e.g., Mon grand-père a une belle barbe blanche qu'il peigne soigneusement (My grandfather has a beautiful white beard that he combs carefully).
Sub-theme: Visual Arts (Les arts visuels)
Debate whether there should be equality of couples at work and at home.

Give quizzes on that vocabulary.

Summary: Have the students found the answers to the questions? What is a modern family? What constitutes it? Does it differ in different societies?

How do the ideals of beauty and aesthetics influence daily life?
Activities:
Have students research art movements in France and present their findings orally to the class.

Discuss: What is considered art, and why?

Debate: How do the ideals of beauty affect modern life?

Visit the Louvre online and have students describe one of its famous paintings.

Have students write an essay on their own ideal of beauty.

Summary: Request a summary of students' findings on beauty.

How are perceptions of beauty and creativity established?

How do the arts both reflect and challenge cultural viewpoints?

Do families differ across different societies?

TV5MONDEhas a worksheet on multiculturalism that your students can complete. This is also a good opportunity to discuss immigration and the recent problem with the influx of immigrants in Europe.

Do this listening and comprehension exercise on multiculturalism on the France Culture website.

Debate the ideals of multiculturalism: For example, is it possible to support the distinctive identities of each cultural group?

Summary: What have your students learned about multiculturalism and the quest for identity?

How does an individual's identity develop over time?
Bring French immersion to your classroom!
How is identity expressed in various situations?

Review the subjunctive and the conditional. The review of these two tenses is important, as they can be used to ask questions such as Si tu étais le President français, accepterais-tu tous les immigrants ? (If you were the French president, would you accept all immigrants?) or Faut-il qu'on accueille les immigrants ? (Should we accept immigrants?)

Describe a wedding after listening to the song "Allongés dans l'herbe" ("Stretched out in the grass"), using the imperfect and the passé compose.

Summary: Are the students able to answer any of the questions above?

How is contemporary life influenced by various products, practices and perspectives?

What challenges does contemporary life present?

Review the imperfect and the passé composé. Your students will need these two tenses to describe actions and/or events in the past.

Discuss/compare different forms of entertainment: the tape cassette, the CD, the DVD, the Blu-ray disc, etc.

Debate: Ask your students if they agree that people feel cut off from the world without television and if this also applies to other technology such as cell phones, and if that is good or bad.

Summary: Students should be able to answer the questions about how science and technology has had an effect on our lives, what has driven innovation and whether scientists need to have a moral code.

What are the reasons behind scientific advancement?

Is morality required of a scientist?

Summary: Ask the students what they have learned about global challenges, their origins and possible solutions.

What are their origins?

Do a grammar review on nouns, the present tense and the imperative. The choice of these three grammar constructions is strategic: The students will need to use many nouns to describe the environment, they will need to discuss current environmental issues using the present tense and the imperative will be useful to point out things people will have to do in order to save our planet.

My sample syllabus, however, is going to go from Theme 1 to Theme 6. It provides a basic template of ideas which you can then adapt as you see fit. Each theme expands on one sub-theme, but of course it is also up to you which sub-themes you choose-you have several options.

Theme 1: Global Challenges (Les défis mondiaux)

Before doing the activities below connected with this sub-theme, you need to do three things with your students:

The following activities should lead to possible answers to the pertinent questions proposed for this theme:

Theme 2: Science and Technology (La science et la technologie)

Sub-theme: Discoveries and Inventions (Les découvertes et les inventions)

What you need to do to prepare the students for the activities:

The following activities should all link together to answer the questions:

Theme 3: Contemporary Life (La vie contemporaine)

Before doing the activities, do the following:

The activities should contribute to answering some of the following questions:

Theme 4: Personal and Public Identities (La quête de soi)

Things to do before starting the activities:

The suggested activities should help answer some of the following questions:

Theme 5: Families and Communities (La famille et la communauté)

Do the following before starting the activities. Remember, however, that you'll also need to integrate both the vocabulary and grammar review into the activities themselves:

The activities in this sub-theme should lead to some answers to the following questions:

Theme 6: Beauty and Aesthetics (La beauté et l'esthétique)

Once again, you should do the following before starting the activities:

The pertinent questions here are:

And there you have it: The six interconnected themes of AP French.

As stated previously, you may teach whichever module you prefer first, as it is all totally flexible. However, be sure to stress the interrelatedness of each theme.

For example, discussions of holidays and celebrations in Contemporary Life, the family in Families and Communities and multiculturalism in Personal and Public Identities may all link up to explaining what kind of human beings inhabit the world and why some contribute to saving the world while others do not.

The six AP French themes are great not only for ensuring a greater proficiency in French and extra credits for your students, but also for teaching them how the French language connects to world outside of your classroom.

Hilda Thomas has a PhD in French and has taught French language and literature from beginner to advanced level at a South African university for many years. Her passions are travel and teaching French.

Oh, and One More Thing...

If you liked these teaching ideas, you'll love using FluentU in your classroom. FluentU takes real-world videos-like music videos, cartoons, documentaries and more-and turns them into personalized language learning lessons for you and your students.

It's got a huge collection of authentic French videos that people in the French-speaking world actually watch on the regular. There are tons of great choices there when you're looking for songs for in-class activities.

You'll find music videos, musical numbers from cinema and theater, kids' singalongs, commercial jingles and much, much more.

On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully annotated for students. Words come with example sentences and definitions. Students will be able to add them to their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are used in other videos.

For example, if a student taps on the word " suit," they'll see this:

Plus, these great videos are all accompanied by interactive features and active learning tools for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun questions based on what the student already knows.

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach French with real-world videos.

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How to Teach the 6 Tantalizing Themes of AP French Creatively and Effectively

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As an AP French teacher, you're always working against the clock.But that doesn't mean you have to sacrifice creativity for efficiency.In fact, the designated course themes lend themselves very well to creative and efficient French teaching.New to teaching AP French?Or just want to i