Curricular development Archive

In this paper I identify strategies to help students explore authentic Russian language materials on social media platforms: Facebook and Vkontakte.  I present an overview of three modules that introduce the Russian language social media landscape and guide students through identifying and tracing political and cultural debates occurring in this space. This approach encourages lifelong learning…

This paper discusses activities designed for students in an Introductory Czech class.  The film-generated assignments presented here, based on selections from the Czech film Kolja made available to students as clips from the BLC Library of Foreign Language Film Clips via bCourses, address not only a range of specific language skills (listening, speaking, writing, and even…

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…

In response to calls for curricular change in foreign language programs and institutional requirements to evaluate programmatic effectiveness, this article presents a backward design approach to the redesign of an introductory French curriculum grounded in the framing concept of cultural literacy. In addition, data from student evaluations, written exams, and instructor feedback illustrate how program evaluation efforts have contributed ...

This article investigates a project that used student-centered teaching and languages for specific purposes to increase university students’ motivation to study Spanish and willingness to communicate. After reflecting on their personal goals and interests, students were required to choose ...

This article describes a pedagogical project designed to optimize opportunities for individual, creative expression in L2 academic writing...

The article addresses the didactic questions of what, why and how aspects of culture and history can be—and should be, it is argued—an integral part of all foreign and second language teaching and learning. In particular, it is argued that the study of literary fiction within tertiary foreign language education can function as a gateway ...

The MLA Report (2007) accords considerable weight to the role of culture in a transformed approach to language education in the U.S. and outlines “one possible model” for developing transcultural understanding that involves the interpretation of the “cultural narratives” inherent ...

This article addresses the teaching of complex representations of history through the study of literary texts in the college-level intermediate German class, employing the categories and tenets of Scollon and Scollon’s (2004) nexus analysis (see also Scollon, 2001). Nexus analysis is a model for understanding the meeting point of social actions and multiple discourses, each ...

Bringing conceptual blending into foreign language classroom discussions of cultural narratives can lead to critical language awareness and a deeper and broader understanding of cultural narratives, which the MLA promotes in its (2007) conceptualization of transcultural and translingual awareness. Using ...