Contents

From https://musicuentos.com

Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell surveyed proficient second language speakers, asking them how they became proficiency, and what their biggest motivation was. The majority of highly proficiency L2 speakers had some sort of study abroad experience, and their primary motivation is mastery, or feelings of success, during the learning process. As a result, Cottrell asserts that this is the primary goal of language classes: "My highest goal is to inspire learners to involve themselves in language communities throughout their lives."

Read her full blog post at https://musicuentos.com/2019/05/survey-proficiency/

From http://blog.tesol.org

In this blog post, Jeff Kuhn introduces classroom gamification, which he defines as "the application of game mechanics to nongame contexts, often for the purpose of amplifying motivation and engagement." He distinguishes gamification from game-based learning and talks about its application in education. Read the post at http://blog.tesol.org/gamifying-the-classroom-part-i-the-basics/

The Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS) is excited to announce that   director Julie Sykes was one of the recipients of the 2019 Faculty Research Awards by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation. The Faculty Research Award provides creative and innovative faculty members funds for ongoing projects. 

Julie’s project, “Measuring Intercultural Competence with Digital Simulations: Validating a Scaled Assessment Model” is already underway. You can learn more about the Intercultural Pragmatics and Interactional Competence (IPIC) model developed by CASLS at https://casls.uoregon.edu/classroom-resources/intercultural-simulation/. Congratulations to Julie for receiving this outstanding award! 

By Julie Sykes, CASLS Director

By Lindsay Marean, InterCom Editor

Last week comedian Tito Ybarra posed this question on Facebook: How many Ojibwes does it take to mow a lawn? Answer: Four!!! Three to do the mowing, and one to sing the Ojibwemowin song. The post came with a video of exactly that: three men mowing, while dancing to the song that Tito was singing. Ojibwemowin is the name of the Ojibwe language, and it's pronounced like the English phrase "Ojibwe mowin'." At this time, the post has 394 likes and 214 shares, an indication of how well this bilingual joke has resonated among Anishinaabe people and language activists.

This week, celebrate multilingualism by going on a translanguaging quest, and then inviting your students to do the same. Your quest and theirs is to find some multilingual jokes, and then to see who can create their own original jokes.

Start with the understanding that what you're looking for are not jokes about bilingual people, but rather jokes that require knowledge of multiple languages to be funny. Here are a few places to start:

• If you Google "bilingual puns," you'll be rewarded right away with a good selection. You can also Google for specific language pairs, such as "English Korean bilingual puns." 
• Reddit is a good source of bilingual jokes. Here are two good threads to start with: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/aazvp9/anyone_got_any_good_bilingual_jokes/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/34czul/whats_the_best_bilingual_wordplayjoke_youve_heard/
• Wikipedia has an entry that includes eleven different language pairings with example jokes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilingual_pun

Choose a selection of jokes to share with your students. Some of the jokes you find may not be appropriate for your classroom context, which is why it's a good idea for the teacher to go on his/her own quest as a first step.

Once everyone understands the punchline of each joke you share, you can send students on their own quests to find more bilingual jokes. Your main objective here is for students to see how prevalent multilingualism is in the world, and how common it is for people to make use of multiple languages at once for communication. In addition to Internet searches, students may ask multilingual people they know if they know any good jokes. Rather than a short-term assignment, consider keeping a running list or log book of these jokes over the course of several weeks or longer.

Encourage students to create their own original bilingual jokes. You can have a tournament in which the class votes on the funniest joke, bracket-style. For guidelines and inspiration for setting up such a tournament, see this InterCom article: https://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/content/24750.

Have fun, and remember to celebrate your ability to use multiple languages at once to make people laugh (or groan)!

From http://www.channelviewpublications.com/display.asp?isb=9781845416775

Language and Tourism in Postcolonial Settings
Edited by Angelika Mietzner and Anne Storch
Published by Multilingual Matters

This book focuses on perspectives from and on the global south, providing fresh data and analyses on languages in African, Caribbean, Middle-Eastern and Asian tourism contexts. It provides a critical perspective on tourism in postcolonial and neocolonial settings, explored through in-depth case studies. The volume offers a multifaceted view on how language commodifies, and is commodified in, tourism settings and considers language practices and discourse as a way of constructing identities, boundaries and places. It also reflects on academic practice and economic dynamics in a field that is characterized by social inequalities and injustice, and tourism as the world's largest industry enacting dynamic communicative, social and cultural transformations. The book will appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of tourism studies, linguistics, literature, cultural history and anthropology, as well as researchers and professionals in these fields.

Visit the publisher's website at http://www.channelviewpublications.com/display.asp?isb=9781845416775

From https://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-2210.html

Fairness, Justice and Language Assessment
By Tim McNamara, Ute Knoch, and Jason Fan
Published by Oxford University Press

This book has two goals, each related to the validity of language assessment. The first goal is to explore the difference between fairness and justice in language assessment. The authors distinguish internal and external dimensions of the equitable and just treatment of individuals taking language tests which are used as gatekeeping devices to determine access to education and employment, immigrant status, citizenship, and other rights. The second goal is to show how the extent of test fairness can be demonstrated and improved using the tools of psychometrics, in particular the models collectively known as Rasch measurement. 

Visit the publisher's website at https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fairness-justice-and-language-assessment-paperback-9780194017084?lang=en&cc=nl

From https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/applied-linguistics-and-second-language-acquisition/learning-through-language-towards-educationally-informed-theory-language-learning?format=HB

Learning through Language: Towards an Educationally Informed Theory of Language Learning
Edited by Vibeke Grøver, Paola Uccelli, Meredith Rowe, and Elena Lieven
Published by Cambridge University Press

Learning language and using language to learn is at the core of any educational activity. Bringing together a globally representative team of experts, this volume presents an innovative and empirically robust collection of studies that examine the role of language in education, with a particular emphasis on features of school-relevant language in middle childhood and adolescents, and its precursors in early childhood. It addresses issues such as how children's linguistic and literacy experiences at home prepare them for school, how the classroom functions as a language-mediated learning environment, and how schools can support language minority students in academic attainment. Set in three parts - Early Childhood, Middle Childhood and Adolescence and Learning in Multilingual Contexts - each part features a discussion from experts in the field to stimulate conversation and further routes for research. Its structure will make it useful for anyone interested in ongoing efforts towards building a pedagogically relevant theory of language learning.

Visit the publisher's website at https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/applied-linguistics-and-second-language-acquisition/learning-through-language-towards-educationally-informed-theory-language-learning?format=HB

From https://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-2263.html

The 7th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language will be hosted by the University of New Mexico. The conference dates are February 27-29, 2020. This annual symposium welcomes researchers, instructors, as well as K-12 educators. 

The National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language offers a common forum for scholars, students, and educators interested in sharing their knowledge and expertise in the field of learning and instruction of Spanish as a heritage language and related fields. During the Symposium, we will host workshops and sessions about different aspects of Spanish heritage language teaching and research presentations on Spanish as a heritage language. The 6th National Symposium provides the setting to learn, exchange ideas, and develop opportunities for collaboration.

Call for Papers: 

Abstracts for 20-minute presentations, posters, or workshops on any field of study relating to Spanish as a Heritage Language in terms of education/pedagogy and linguistics analysis will be accepted from June 3 to November 1, 2019. Abstracts can be written in Spanish or English, should be a maximum of 300 words (not including references or title) and anonymized to exclude any identifiable information. Authors may submit a total of two abstracts, one individual and one joint. 

Submit through Easy Abs: http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/NSSHL7

From http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html

Northeast Modern Language Association 51st Annual Convention
Boston, Massachusetts
March 5-8-2020

The theme of NeMLA 2020 is "Shaping and Sharing Identities: Spaces, Places, Languages, and Cultures"--a topic embracing the many facets that define each and every human being across cultures and languages, as well as the many ways in which we interact with each other in today's rapidly changing global world. 

Abstract proposal deadline: September 30, 2019

View the full call for proposals at http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html