Results in BLC Posts
Posted by Victoria Williams on September 15, 2010
The teaching of Arabic in American universities today, like that of so many other more commonly taught foreign languages, has by and large come to be guided by the same communicative approach objectives that regularly inform the profession as a whole, such that curricula frequently place an explicit emphasis on the development of the four…
Posted by Victoria Williams on September 15, 2010
Introduction: In recent years, a growing number of educators have begun utilizing “blogs” in Second Language (SL) and Foreign Language (FL) learning environments, to promising results (e.g. Campbell, 2003; Johnson, 2004; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Richardson, 2004; Thorne, Webber, & Bensinger 2005). In language learning contexts, blogs can serve a variety of tasks, including allowing…
Posted by John Wuorenmaa on February 18, 2010
The week after giving his BLC lecture, Professor Andrew Cohen visited Claire Kramsch’s “Language and Power” class and provided the students with an overview of the field of applied linguistics – what it is, what it researches, and where one can study it. His accompanying slide show is attached. Downloads → Download the Applied Linguistics…
Posted by Victoria Williams on January 15, 2010
Many studies show that film or “video has vast potential for enriching language study and making it more enjoyable and effective” (Wood 1992). My fall 2009 BLC Fellow’s project is a demonstration of how film can complement other materials used in class (especially the textbook) by tapping this resource. It involved cutting and preparing Zulu…
Posted by Victoria Williams on January 15, 2010
1. Introduction Blogs written in Spanish are a particularly rich source of contextualized language in use—they are freely available, universally accessible, widely varied, highly interactive, and generally appealing to students. However, some of the same qualities that make blogs attractive for use in a Spanish class also present challenges, especially with regard to their use…
Posted by John Wuorenmaa on September 15, 2009
Prior research indicates that providing language learners with opportunities to interact with one another through online communication tools can promote positive outcomes such as increased motivation, diversified participation, and improved oral production (Lamy & Hampel, 2007). However, with the exception of Blake’s (2000) suggestion that jigsaw activities are especially effective for promoting negotiation of meaning…
Posted by John Wuorenmaa on September 15, 2009
My BLC project was conceived largely as an extension of Jason Vivrette’s fall 2008 project for first-semester Turkish. Through a series of film clips that emphasized the multi-cultural nature of Turkish society, Jason encouraged students to reflect critically on both the concept of Turkishness as well as the experience of learning Turkish in an American…
Posted by Mark Kaiser on September 15, 2009
My research starts from the recognition of the importance of teaching media literacy in Korean—a form of literacy which is becoming an essential part of language education today, since knowing how to “read” sophisticated layers of multimodal communication in the written mode of technology-mediated communication is becoming more and more a necessary skill for reading…
Posted by Mark Kaiser on May 1, 2009
Featuring Mark Kaiser (MK), Claire Kramsch (CK), and Sirpa Tuomainen (ST) MK: Both of you are back from sojourns in Europe. Can you tell us about what you were engaged in there? CK: I had a semester sabbatical and I spent it in Paris, where I grew up. It gave me the opportunity to go…
Posted by Mark Kaiser on January 15, 2009
The 2007 MLA report calls for a reevaluation of our curricula, approaches, and methodologies with the goal of fostering translingual and transcultural competence (TL/TC). Comparing an instrumental view of language learning to a constitutive view, the report outlines specific goals and analytical skills for students. In addition to acquiring functional language abilities, students “are taught…