Foreign language education Archive

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…

Beyond Citizenship and the Liberal Arts: Reforming the Humanities PhD by Russell Berman, German Studies and Comparative Literature, Stanford University Instead of defending the humanities with the dubious claim that they make for better citizens, we need to consider the real experience of college education, the character of learning processes and vocational prospects. Doctoral education…

Language Teaching and SLA: Understanding the Limits and Possibilities of the Research-teaching Interface by Lourdes Ortega, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University Language teachers often feel unsure of the value of second language acquisition (SLA) research, wondering if studies about language teaching are relevant and realistic enough to give them insights that can inform and improve…

Where is the language classroom today?: Reconsidering the place/s of language learning with technology by David Malinowski, Berkeley Language Center, University of California, Berkeley Labeled increasingly as “traditional” or “brick-and-mortar”, the physical university classroom has been criticized for fostering a teacher-centered, top-down, and formulaic model of education, whose resistance to innovation is symbolized by the…

Teaching as a Subversive Activity—Revisited by H. Douglas Brown, Professor Emeritus of English, San Francisco State University For virtually every language teacher, some of the primary driving motives for teaching language are rooted in our desire to be “agents for change” in this world, our desire to help people to communicate across national, political, and…

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…

A Brief History of the Universe of Foreign Language Education:  or, Dirty Little Secrets by Dr. Peter Patrikis, Executive Director, The Winston Churchill Foundation Change in the field of foreign languages is often imposed from the outside (national reports, grant-making agencies, area studies programs, etc.), leaving the foreign language teachers subjected to the whim of…

Workshop: What do we know about (literature) reading proficiency in a second language?   Lecture: Foreign languages surviving and thriving in conventional university settings by Elizabeth Bernhardt, Professor of German, and Stanford Language Center, Director, Stanford University, California WORKSHOP: This workshop will focus on second-language reading proficiency with a specific emphasis on upper-level expository and…

Representing Language Use for Foreign Language Learners: Contributions of the Native, the Near-native, and the Non-native by Carl Blyth, University of Texas, Austin Friday, April 19, 2002

From One Consortium to Another by Peter Patrikis, Yale University Tuesday, April 2, 2002