View Content #24680

By Julie Syles, CASLS Director

You are in a new city trying to figure out where a close place to eat might be. You ask a few people at the hotel and after a couple if responses opt for something close and local. Grabbing your phone, you open up your favorite restaurant app and navigate to the closet spot with five stars.  It’s delicious! After eating, you open up the map and walk towards the local museum, tracking local art pieces along the way. Place and your experience are directly connected, your digital device mediating that experience and enhancing your ability to explore the new space in which you find yourself.  When used with intentionality, this experience can also have significant value in the language learning classroom. As we utilize digital tools to get learners outside, we can enhance their experiences within the places they spend time every day, as well as the places they explore for the first time.  This week we explore ways in which place-based experiences can be incorporated in language classrooms. A few ideas are below:

1. Use Your Favorite Apps: Have learners use their favorite apps in the target language. They can change the language in their settings to localize the way they use their everyday digital resources. For example, a learner could spend a week using their Maps app in Spanish or German instead of English.
2. Community Documentation: Ask learners to document the influence of the target language as they explore their community. This can be in the form of pictures, a digital journal, or a scavenger hunt app on their phones (check out Aurasma and ARIS for two app ideas). This can work in places with large communities of the target language or smaller places where the influence is less obvious. Even exploration of a grocery store can yield evidence of influence from a variety of languages and cultures.
3. Create Your Own Experience: As can be seen in this week’s Activity of the Week, learners can also use ARIS to create their own storyboards and experiences. These can guide learners through their community or focus on specific language functions that make sense in their learning context.

Regardless of the choices one makes, a focus on place and the surrounding community has a number of benefits for language learning. Learners can get out of the classroom and see the ways in which language live and breathe in the world. Happy exploring!