Spring 2023 BLC Fellows Forum
Instructional Development Research Projects
Learning Mandarin and Cantonese in Health Communication Contexts
Chi Leung Chan, Lecturer, East Asian Languages & Cultures
When Mandarin speakers learn Cantonese (and vice versa), they enjoy abundant transferable knowledge, yet suffer from tricky exceptions. The situation is more acute when it comes to professional contexts. This presentation aims to describe a Chinese learning materials development process that will equip students with the skills and knowledge needed for health communication contexts.
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Designing an Instructor’s Guide to Introducing Gender Neutral Grammar in Italian Language Class
Simo Cocco, GSR, Italian Studies
This project aims to create a guide for Italian language instructors to incorporate gender neutral Italian in the classroom, with particular emphasis on student involvement, basic understanding of Italian culture and language and of grammatical and social gender, and use of media. This presentation will focus on the guide’s design process and experimental implementation.
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Channeling Fluency: YouTube Interviews in the Advanced Russian Classroom
Semyon Leonenko, GSR, Slavic Languages & Literatures
This project is tailored to the needs of intermediate-high and advanced students of Russian who seek to acquire the conversational skills necessary to move beyond the discussion of basic everyday subjects. My presentation will provide an outline for the content-based Advanced Conversation class which focuses on YouTube interviews as a genre and some conversational strategies they afford.
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Tongue-Tied and Heart-Bound: Re-Placing Persian in Afghanistan
Ahmad Rashid Salim, GSR, Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures
This presentation unpacks the complicated and confounding layers of history, both past and modern, to display how governments and powers have displaced and disenfranchised the Kabuli dialect of Persian, something that continues to this day in the way academia engages with the Persian language.
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