Results in BLC Posts
Posted by Victoria Williams on March 19, 2011
What Makes an Ideal Hybrid Language Learner? by Professor Robert Blake, Spanish and Classics, University of California, Davis. What factors make for a successful online L2 learning experience? What is the ideal profile of a hybrid language learner with access to both online and classroom meetings? While previous studies have examined online learning in comparative…
Posted by Victoria Williams on February 26, 2011
Teaching Pragmatics in the L2 Classroom by Professor Andrew Cohen, Second Language Studies, University of Minnesota. This presentation makes the point that it is not enough these days for teachers simply to teach the language forms; that it is imperative that they also teach their learners strategies for interpreting the language used by others and…
Posted by Victoria Williams on February 12, 2011
Language Development in an Urban Migrant Community: The Turkish/German/English of Children and Adolescents in Berlin by Professor Carol Pfaff, Department of Linguistics, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin Photos from the event: Abstract: In the course of my 30+ years in Berlin, I have conducted several empirical studies of the…
Posted by Victoria Williams on January 25, 2011
Striving for something counts for as much as achieving something. (An Armenian proverb) Santoukht Mikaelian believes this is half the battle, and she tells her Armenian students: Yes, there are a lot of people who know more than you do, but you are the ones with desire: you’ve actually started studying Armenian. Santoukht Mikaelian, born…
Posted by Victoria Williams on January 18, 2011
On Thanksgiving weekend, I gave a presentation on diaspora research and Hungarian language maintenance efforts at the annual Hungarian Congress in Cleveland, Ohio. On Thanksgiving weekend?–you may ask with surprise. The event was launched in 1961 by Hungarian immigrant and refugee intellectuals for whom Thanksgiving had not yet become an established family holiday, and at…
Posted by Victoria Williams on January 15, 2011
Bulgarian is a less commonly taught language with fewer than 9 million speakers worldwide, and consequently, though there is an excellent textbook and reference grammar available, listening materials are in short supply. In the semesters I spent as a GSI for Bulgarian, I sought ways to incorporate authentic aural material into the course to give…
Posted by Victoria Williams on January 15, 2011
Telugu belongs to the Dravidian language family and is the second most spoken language in India with more than 80 million speakers. Telugu is mainly spoken in and is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. It was given classical language status by the Government of India in 2008 because of…
Posted by Victoria Williams on January 15, 2011
Introduction As both students and instructors of foreign languages move into intermediate- and advanced-level courses, they participate in increasingly more complex interactions with each other and also with the texts that they study and create. Students in the second-year French program (French 3 and 4) are expected to work equally in the four areas of…
Posted by Victoria Williams on December 4, 2010
Fall 2010 BLC Fellows William Allen Heidenfeldt, Hepzibah Sunkari, and Traci Lindsey presented the results of their semester-long research projects to improve the understanding and practice of language instruction. Here are some photos from the event; abstracts from the presentations appear below the images. Congratulations to all the fellows, and thanks to all who were…
Posted by Victoria Williams on November 22, 2010
I have been participating in the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association’s annual conference for several years now. As a Senior Lecturer, I do not have the same privileges as Senate Faculty in terms of available departmental funding for travel. I must look for funding elsewhere and/or pay for it myself. Consequently, I choose my conferences…