BLC Fellows Reports Archive

This presentation investigates the use of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) for viewing figurative art in Danish classes to enhance students’ cultural literacy. Although VTS principles have been tested in museums and in K-12 classrooms, they have never been applied in foreign language (FL) classrooms. My primary goal was therefore to test if VTS strategies would…

My project addresses issues with composition in the second-year French language program. In response to concerns voiced in surveys by students and instructors, I designed four units and suggested lesson plans. The first provides color-coding analysis of sample essays, allowing students to visualize and parse the elements of an essay. The second unit walks the…

In my talk, I will present some of the materials I have made for an interdisciplinary intermediate Russian cultural curriculum, intended to combine the study of literature and film with historical readings. I will discuss challenges of preparing intermediate Russian students to read complex non-fictional texts, focusing especially on the following three areas: the choice…

In this presentation we will report on our efforts to norm the questions that will be used in the Japanese online placement test, to be administered for the first time this coming August. We will present our analysis of the norming test results and the measures we took to handle problematic questions. We will discuss…

The purpose of this project was to develop pedagogical material for a film module on historical memory in Intermediate Spanish, as part of a larger departmental goal of increasing the presence and effectiveness of cinematic resources in our literacy-based curriculum. This presentation will describe the development, piloting, and evaluation of a unit on historical memory…

From musical references woven into urban landscapes to the use of arias in films, opera has forged a certain idea of Italianness, whether ironic, serious or stereotypical. Because of its powerful cultural reach and multimedial and collaborative dimensions, opera is a gateway to approaching specific aspects of the Italian language. My project investigates the potential…

Will digital textbooks replace print textbooks as the standard material for teaching and learning languages? Will instructional design reach the point where computer-based learning systems do away with the need for instructors? Will continued advances in machine translation serve as further de-motivation for learning a language at all? To provide perspective on these questions, this…

Currently, Japanese lecturers create and give 60-minute walk-in placement exams for new students one week before each semester starts. The lecturers grade each test manually, so the results may vary depending on how and by whom the tests are graded and various subjective factors. Therefore, the Japanese Program needs a more efficient and objective method…

This presentation will focus on the creation of a diversity-based curriculum comprised of a series of six lesson plans designed to introduce intermediate students of Russian to the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Russian-speaking world, as well as to some of the problematics of cultural contact in the context of contemporary Russia. The goal…

Following the political division of Yugoslavia and the corresponding linguistic breakup of Serbo-Croatian into “BCS” (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian), all three linguistic variants are taught together in one course. At times, this situation can lead to frustration for both students and instructors, due not only to the amount of attention devoted to explaining the differences among…