Results in BLC Posts
Posted by Victoria Williams on September 15, 2011
A website curriculum for teaching Russian phonetics and avant-garde literary culture. Website address: https://sites.google.com/a/fulbrightmail.org/russian-phonetics-through-avant-garde-poetry/ The idea for this project emerged from of my experience teaching Russian at Berkeley and my own budding dissertation work on Russian avant-garde poetry. As a graduate student instructor of Russian—and a student in the throes of research—I became increasingly convinced…
Posted by Mark Kaiser on September 10, 2011
**** Videos now available - please use Safari or Firefox ***** Saturday, Sept.10, 2011 9-5:30 pm 370 Dwinelle INTRODUCTION The MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages (2007) has advocated teaching, together with functional language abilities, ‘critical language awareness’ and ‘historical and political consciousness’. Indeed, the many commemorative events in the cultures we teach as…
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 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
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 Orlando Garcia on September 17, 2010
Teaching Without Books or Photocopies by Deborah Brooks, Lecturer in TESL, Peralta Colleges. I create the format/structure; my students create the content. This takes much less prep time AND students learn faster since all of the content is meaningful. For passive voice, I ask, “Have you ever been robbed?” For comparative adjectives, I ask them…
Posted by Victoria Williams on September 15, 2010
The teaching of Arabic in American universities today, like that of so many other more commonly taught foreign languages, has by and large come to be guided by the same communicative approach objectives that regularly inform the profession as a whole, such that curricula frequently place an explicit emphasis on the development of the four…
Posted by Victoria Williams on September 15, 2010
Introduction: In recent years, a growing number of educators have begun utilizing “blogs” in Second Language (SL) and Foreign Language (FL) learning environments, to promising results (e.g. Campbell, 2003; Johnson, 2004; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Richardson, 2004; Thorne, Webber, & Bensinger 2005). In language learning contexts, blogs can serve a variety of tasks, including allowing…
Posted by Victoria Williams on January 15, 2010
Many studies show that film or “video has vast potential for enriching language study and making it more enjoyable and effective” (Wood 1992). My fall 2009 BLC Fellow’s project is a demonstration of how film can complement other materials used in class (especially the textbook) by tapping this resource. It involved cutting and preparing Zulu…
Posted by Orlando Garcia on September 18, 2009
Tricky Points – Creative Solutions PANEL DISCUSSION: Santoukht Mikaelian, Slavic Languages & Literatures Malgosia Szudelski, Slavic Languages & Literatures Karma Ngodup, East Asian Languages & Cultures University of California Foreign Language Lecturers discuss linguistic/cultural points difficult to teach in their respective languages (Armenian, Polish, Tibetan), and present their solutions for making them teachable.