 The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention culminates the fall conference season, and our staff can’t wait to meet you at this year’s convention in New Orelans! We hope you’ll stop by Language Resource Centers at booth 1807 and join us for the following sessions:
Free Standards-based Language Teaching Resources from the LRCs
Friday, November 16 1:00-1:45
Room R06
Come learn about free standards-based resources for more than 142 languages available from 16 Language Resource Centers funded by the Department of Education: assessment, classroom materials, and professional development for all levels and languages. URLs for downloadable resources are provided.
Creating Simulations to Assess Intercultural and Pragmatic Competence
Friday, November 16 5:00-5:45
Room 213
Learn to design assessments of intercultural and pragmatic communicative competence using simulations. The session will present a template and explain how language practitioners can quickly build simulation assessments for their own classes. The creation process will be demonstrated using live audience responses to focused questions.
Where Language Meets Culture
Saturday, November 17 2:30-3:15
Room R02
This plenary will focus on intercultural communication and how that plays out in the language classroom and in assessing student progress, the research behind interculturality, and practical ways that classroom practitioners can implement the Intercultural Communication Can-Do Statements in their programs.
Structuring Community Engagement with Functional, Place-based Instruction
Saturday, November 17 4:30-5:15
Room 213
Experiential learning and functional language instruction are both highly regarded pedagogical practices. Taken together they become context sensitive, place- and experienced-based language learning (PEBLL). Participants in this session will learn how to support learners in engaging with the local community in domestic and international contexts.
Issues in Program-wide Assessment: Teachers and Students Tell All
Friday, November 16 2:00-2:45
Room 213
Program-wide proficiency assessment is essential to evaluation of multi-sectioned language programs, but is notoriously difficult to implement. This session reports on a three-year study of program-wide assessment in two large university-level first- and second-year language programs, discussing the range of issues that challenged implementation.
Teaching Novice Learners with Proficiency in Mind: I Can Do It!
Friday, November 16 4:00-4:45
Room 2018
While rhetoric advocating authentic assessment and the proficiency-based language classroom is ubiquitous, such a classroom can be difficult to realize for novice learners. In this session, participants will examine sample student evidence, experience classroom activities, and receive planning documents to facilitate teaching novice learners.
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