Curricular development Archive

Results in BLC Posts

Russian Phonetics: Sound and Meaning in Russian Avant-Garde Poetry

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…

Symposium: History and Memory in Foreign Language Study, 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…

Lecture by Andrew Cohen, February 25, 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…

Creating Classroom Audio Material from Bulgarian Radio

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…

Writing as a Social Act: A Genre-based Approach to Writing Pedagogy in the Foreign Lang. Classroom

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…

Lecture by Deborah Brooks, 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…

Cultivating Awareness: Register and Context in First-Year Arabic

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…

Blogging in SL/FL Classrooms: New(?) Directions?

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…

Teaching Zulu Language and Culture Through Film

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…

Panel Discussion (S. Mikaelian, M. Szudelski, K. Ngodup), 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.  

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