Results in BLC Posts
Posted by Victoria Williams on February 26, 2014
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…
Posted by Victoria Williams on February 15, 2014
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…
Posted by Orlando Garcia on February 1, 2014
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…
Posted by Orlando Garcia on September 28, 2013
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…
Posted by Victoria Williams on July 3, 2013
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…
Posted by Victoria Williams on May 8, 2013
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…
Posted by Orlando Garcia on April 13, 2013
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…
Posted by Victoria Williams on February 7, 2013
This presentation describes a semester-length sequence of lessons structured around closely-watched film clips for fourth-semester Spanish. Based on the implementation of these lessons this semester, and of an analogous application in Italian 4, straightforward guidelines will be presented for the design of sequences of lessons that guide students from a passive to a critical and…
Posted by Victoria Williams on February 7, 2013
Languages such as Czech, with complex grammatical marking and a vocabulary very different from English, are challenging to teach at the elementary level. My project starts from the premise that using a broad range of authentic cultural material, including excerpts from articles, ads, menus, film clips, and songs as the basis for grammatical exposition, drills,…
Posted by Mark Kaiser on January 28, 2013
Invitation to participate in BLC/ETS Language Teaching and Technology Seminar. The Berkeley Language Center and Educational Technology Services welcome your participation in their Spring 2013 seminar on using technology and new media for language teaching. Registration form: http://bit.ly/113fnuO The seminar will meet weekly on Thursdays from 3:30 - 5:00pm in Dwinelle 127, the active learning…