Curricular development Archive

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…

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…

Blended learning: a new (and better) approach to beginning Italian Alessia Blad, University of Notre Dame The study of foreign languages faces numerous opportunities and challenges in today’s increasingly globalized world. In the United States, many foreign language programs are disappearing or in decline. Meanwhile developments in technology and the creation of new media challenge…

Teaching Romance Languages through Intercomprehension: Networking Hearts and Minds in the Language Classroom by Clorinda Donato, California State University This presentation will discuss how the strategies of Romance Language Intercomprehension are being adapted to the North American context to teach French and Italian to Spanish speakers at California State University, Long Beach. Topics to be…

The Making of a Soap Opera to Develop Students’ Foreign Language Writing and Speaking Skills by Thomas Simpson, Northwestern University This seminar describes a third-year, quarter-long language course centered on the creation by students of a parody of an Italian television soap opera. Students are called upon to act as writers, actors, directors, videographers, and…

For my project, I have created and trialed cultural materials for use in second-year French classes that look at non-hexagonal (or Francophone) cultures on their own terms. By putting together cultural units that focus on specific geographical places and topics, I expand the idea of engaging with French culture beyond traditional ideas of Paris-centric themes…

This past December, I participated in The 2012 International Conference of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language Conference. In this conference, there were several topics covered. The ones that stood out exceptionally were: Teaching Methodology, Language Analysis, Research, and Material and Grammatical Analysis and Presentation. I found these topics to be very helpful to my…

Languaging and Linguistic Exostructures: Aligning cultural-historical, ecological, and distributed approaches to L2 development by Steve Thorne, Portland State University & University of Groningen, The Netherlands Within a variety of language-related disciplines, there is growing commitment to more holistic and ecologically oriented frameworks that recognize cognition and communication as coordinated, embodied, relational, distributed, and arrayed across…

The 2007 MLA Report calls for large-scale reform in university foreign language (FL) departments to integrate the study of language, literature, and culture and move beyond the the language-content dichotomy that has characterized the undergraduate curriculum for decades. This article explores the implications of these recommendations for introductory FL courses, arguing ...