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Content Type: 2
Title: Topic of the Week now included
Body:
This week's original InterCom did not include the Topic of the Week. Here is the issue with the Topic of the Week included.
Source: CASLS
Inputdate: 2016-05-07 11:04:52
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Publishdate: 2016-05-09 10:37:07
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Content Type: 5
Title: UO Chinese Flagship Student Awarded Boren Scholarship for Study Abroad
Body:
The Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS) congratulates Ava Jamerson, a University of Oregon Chinese Flagship Program student, who was selected to receive the prestigious David L. Boren Scholarship to study abroad. Ava was awarded $20,000 to support her Chinese Flagship Capstone year in Nanjing, China next year.
The Chinese Flagship Program, coordinated by CASLS, provides students with the opportunity to develop professional-level proficiency in Chinese while studying an academic major of their choice. The program emphasizes real-world linguistic and cultural skills so that graduates are prepared to use their Chinese language and skills in a professional environment.
Ava, currently a sophomore pursuing a social science degree, finds the Chinese Flagship Program very helpful. “It allows me to be surrounded by people who share the same language goals as I do. The students are all driven and serve as a support group through our journey in language learning.”
Ava will attend Nanjing University next year. “I’m looking forward to studying at a Chinese university alongside [native-speaking] Chinese students. It will be a really unique experience. I hope to learn a lot and gain many friends as well as gain some work experience,” Ava says.
David L. Boren Scholarships provide U.S. undergraduate students with funding to acquire language skills and experience in regions critical to U.S. interests and underrepresented in study abroad programs. This year, Ava’s was one of 165 Boren Scholarships awarded from a field of 820 applications.
Ava plans to work for the government for at least one year to fulfill the scholarship’s service requirement. She is also considering attending graduate school to study international relations.
The Oregon Chinese Flagship Program is funded by The Language Flagship through the National Security Education Program.
Source: CASLS Spotlight
Inputdate: 2016-05-07 11:13:57
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Content Type: 5
Title: STARTALK 2016: Focused, Aligned, and Growing
Body:
The 2016 STARTALK Spring Conference last weekend had a singular focus: growth. STARTALK, a component of the National Security Language Initiative designed to expand the teaching and learning of strategic world languages, is committed to the growth of national instruction of these languages. Its presence at the recent National School Board Association Conference and presence at the upcoming National Parent Teacher Association Conference support this commitment. At its own conference, STARTALK further supported its focus on growth by delivering required conference sessions regarding alignment and planning for learning with a growth mindset.
The Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS) at the University of Oregon supports STARTALK’s growth focus through its introduction and ongoing support of a newly-redesigned version of LinguaFolio Online (LFO), an online language proficiency portfolio. Specifically, the new platform includes mechanisms to encourage learners to engage in deep levels of reflection regarding their growth toward the learning targets embedded within LFO (set forth by the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements). CASLS representatives were at the conference to support the technical implementation of the new LinguaFolio Online at two drop-in lab sessions. Dr. Julie Sykes, CASLS Director, also addressed the pedagogical implementation of LinguaFolio online with Dr. Aleidine Moeller from the University of Nebraska in a breakout session entitled, “Make LinguaFolio Online Work for Your STARTALK Program.”
Source: CASLS Spotlight
Inputdate: 2016-05-07 11:20:01
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Content Type: 2
Title: Open Position: Executive Director, National Foreign Language Center
Body:
The College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland is seeking an Executive Director of the National Foreign Language Center. The Executive Director (ED) of the National Foreign Language Center leads a major research unit in the College of Arts & Humanities (ARHU). The position pursues governmental and sponsored research focused on language education at the national and international level and may serve as PI for the Center’s sponsored projects. The ED is responsible for insuring that the terms of all contracts and grants are met in a timely manner consistent with grant agreements and university policies and procedures. The ED works to ensure future funding and business development to sustain the Center and expand its operational capacity. S/he promotes the NFLC’s mission to facilitate multi-lingual communication by US citizens and within the US through intensive and innovative strategic planning and program development with partnering institutions, organizations and enterprises throughout the US and globally. The ED is responsible for maintain and enhancing the visibility and expertise of NFLC through programs, conference presentations and the publication of papers and books on a variety of topics related to the Center’s mission. As unit head, the ED oversees the coordination and implementation of all administrative activity of NFLC and directly supervises the Center’s Deputy Director, Director of Finance and Administration and Director of National Outreach.
View the full job posting at https://ejobs.umd.edu/postings/42435. For best consideration, please submit your application no later than May 20, 2016.
Source: NFLRC
Inputdate: 2016-05-09 09:46:58
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Content Type: 3
Title: Intention, Interculturality, and Study Abroad
Body:
by Stephanie Knight, CASLS Language Technology Specialist
We were students in a restaurant in Campeche, Mexico. Our waiter was clearly annoyed, and I was ashamed. We had a huge party that would hardly fit in the small establishment. A girl from our group complained loudly about the speed of the service. Two other group members asked pedantic questions regarding the quality of the water used in the restaurant. At the end of the meal, we asked for our checks to be split twelve ways. The waiter stared at us with such disdain that I wanted to disappear.
Two years later, I was in Bahía de Tela, Honduras at a different restaurant. I listened as the founder of the Afro Honduran Women’s Network (Enlace de Mujeres Negras de Honduras, or EMUNEH) discussed her new partnership with the Women’s Business Development Organization (Organización de Desarrollo Empresarial Femenino, or ODEF) in which Garifuna women affected by HIV/AIDS would be granted microloans to fund their businesses. I left the restaurant and conducted interviews with a variety of the business owners and negotiated complex topics with much more intercultural sensitivity than I ever had to display in Mexico.
These anecdotes illustrate an oftentimes overlooked truth when it comes to studying abroad; doing so will not necessarily develop the interculturality of learners. In fact, as Salisbury (2011) asserts, little research exists to demonstrate that the intercultural gains experienced by study abroad participants are attributable to the experience itself.
So what must educators do to ensure the success of study abroad programs in developing the intercultural awareness of their language learners? The list below provides tips to address this concern.
Preparatory Phase
- Begin with the end in mind. Highlight what pragmatic and strategic language skills you want the learners to develop. Prepare the learners by allowing them to observe, evaluate, and reflect upon those language skills.
- Mediate the gaps in the knowledge and experience that learners will experience while they are studying abroad. Manageable gaps cultivate a dissonance that can ignite curiosity (Houghton, 2014). Engage with learners who have already participated in study abroad to predict what those gaps will be and use that information in planning your instruction.
- Help learners to set goals for themselves regarding which language functions they wish to master while studying abroad. Doing so will help them to be intentional in their interactions.
- Have learners discuss biases that they may have regarding the host country. Give them tips on handling those biases while in the host country. Some of these tips can be found at How Can We Have A More Candid Conversation About Race? (http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/474820279/beyond-tolerance)
Experiential Phase
- While studying abroad, allow learners to observe and evaluate authentic language use and reflect upon it just as much as they produce it. Highlight the nuances involved in the execution of culturally appropriate speech acts and service encounters (i.e., extending invitations, apologies, and complaints). Allow learners to evaluate how well they handle various speech acts and to set goals for future encounters.
- Be intentional in cultivating authentic social encounters (these can be face-to-face or mediated by technology) for your learners so that they are engaged in all registers of language in a variety of contexts.
- Require the use of the target language insofar as it makes sense to do so. Set clear expectations that will push even highly affective learners to practice the target language, but allow for L1 use in appropriate situations such as the occurrence of medical emergencies and when learners are engaged in metacognitive reflection.
- Push learners to engage in tasks with members of the host country without their friends. Doing so will help learners to build autonomy and will force them to engage in target-culture interactions.
- Have group reflection sessions in which your learners discuss what they have observed about the target culture and what they still do not understand. Use this discussion to inspire the design of future learning experiences.
Reflection Phase
- After returning from the trip, allow learners to decompress by sharing the knowledge and competencies that they gained through study abroad. Use this discussion to foster the discussions that your next group of learners will have in the preparatory phase.
Sources
Houghton, S. (2014). Exploring manifestations of curiosity in study abroad as part of intercultural communicative competence. El Sevier. 42. 368-382.
Myers, V. (2016, April 22). How Can We Have A More Candid Conversation about Race?. Ted Radio Hour. Retrieved on May 12, 2016 from http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio- hour/474820279/beyond- tolerance.
Salisbury, M. (2011) The effect of study abroad on intercultural competence among undergraduate college students (doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved on May 12, 2016 from Iowa Research Online at http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2458&context=etd
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
Inputdate: 2016-05-13 10:10:01
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Content Type: 4
Title: Playing Ingress to Explore a Community
Body:
The purpose of this activity is to empower learners (intermediate or advanced) to explore a city in the host country while studying abroad and enable them to discuss a cultural influence with members of the target culture. Specifically, learners will focus on culturally appropriate methods of making requests and leave takings during these interactions.
Objectives: Learners will be able to:
- Read and follow instructions on a mobile app in the target language
- Make culturally-appropriate requests in the target language
- Engage in culturally-appropriate leave takings in the target language
Modes: Interpretive Reading, Interpersonal Communication
Resources: Video clips, Portal Handout, Ingress app, Ingress Teacher Tip Sheet, mobile device with video and photo recording capabilities
Procedure:
- If you have not done so already, introduce learners to cultural content that aligns with your program. Some examples include protest art, cultural diaspora, and war history.
- Allow learners to observe video clips of individuals from the target culture making requests and engaging in leave takings by watching short news or talk show interviews. As they take notes, learners should answer the following questions:
- What do you notice about the register of language used in the interactions?
- What steps are taken in executing a successful request? Successfully taking leave? For example, is it common to have to repeat a request or to explain it before it is met in the target language culture in certain situations?
- What vocabulary and grammar are important to successful requests and leave takings?
- Discuss the learners’ observations as a class. Highlight any nuances or subtleties that are inherent to requests and leave takings that may be difficult to observe.
- Introduce learners to Ingress, a place-based mobile app that they will use to explore a local community in the host country (for more information on Ingress, please see our Teacher Tip Sheet). Give learners roughly 20 minutes to download Ingress on their mobile devices in the target language and to pick a faction to represent.
- Learners will work as a class to brainstorm questions that they would like to ask members of the local community about the cultural content that you are covering in class. Then, they will engage in role plays in which they request more information about the cultural content and appropriately execute a leave taking sequence.
- Provide learners with feedback on their role plays. It is beneficial to do so as a class.
- Send learners out into the community to explore the target cultural content by playing Ingress individually. The easiest way to do so is to have the learners complete one of the thematic missions on the game. These missions can include visiting various churches, murals, and a variety of other landmarks (you can find the missions at ingressmm.com). At the location of each portal on the mission, learners will search for and document evidence of the target content. In addition, they will use the questions that they brainstormed in Step 5 to interview at least one member of the community at each portal regarding his or her knowledge of the locations that the learners discover. All of these observations and interactions will be recorded by the learners on the Portal Handout. Teachers must emphasize to that in order to complete Step 6 of this activity, learners should record the interviews in either an audio or a video format.
- The learners will then regroup as a class and share what they learned. Teachers should be sure to ask the learners the following questions:
- What types of places did you visit? Were they important community areas? Why or why not?
- What cultural influences did you note as you traveled through the community?
- Were the people that you spoke to aware of those influences?
- What did you experience when making requests and leave takings that you expected? What did you experience that was unexpected?
- Finally, learners will get into pairs and reflect upon their interactions. They will each provide their group member with two compliments regarding their performance in making requests and engaging in leave takings. They will also provide one recommendation for improvement.
Notes:
More Ingress activities are available for teachers at https://games2teach.uoregon.edu/download/classroom-activities/.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
Inputdate: 2016-05-13 10:21:58
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Content Type: 5
Title: A Great CALICO 2016!
Body:
May 10-14 marked the annual CALICO (Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium) convention - Evolving Interactions in Digital Language Learning. Held in East Lansing, MI, highlights of the conference included:
- an opening keynote address by Elliot Soloway about blended learning, specifically the BlendedLearningPlatform (BLP), a free, Google classroom friendly platform that supports teachers in creating lessons incorporating Open-Education Resources (OER).
- booth space and presentations by CLEAR, CeLTA, LARC, and COERLL, CASLS sister LRCs.
- insightful presentations and panels about new research and pedagogy, including Laura Villa's presentation on Latinos in the US: Promoting Interaction Among Heritage Language Learners Through Telecollaboration and Pia Sundquist's presntation on The Scale of Social Interaction in Digital Games Related to L2 English [picture below left].
- helpful workshops such as Meaningful Play: Gamers as Teachers conducted by Johnathon Beals, Philip Cameron, Brenda Imber and Val Waldron [picture below right].
We look forward to next year’s conference in Flagstaff, AZ!
Source: CASLS Spotlight
Inputdate: 2016-05-13 11:55:17
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Content Type: 1
Title: Book: Handbook of Second Language Assessment
Body:
From http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/207934?rskey=t0vJuo&result=1
Handbook of Second Language Assessment
Edited by Dina Tsagari and Jayanti Banerjee
Published by de Gruyter
This volume focuses on the principles and practices of second language assessment while considering its impact on society. Part I deals with the conceptual foundations of second language assessment, and Part II addresses the theory and practice of assessing different second language skills. Part III examines the challenges and opportunities of second language assessment in a range of contexts. Part IV examines key issues.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/207934?rskey=t0vJuo&result=1
Source: de Gruyter
Inputdate: 2016-05-15 14:52:06
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Title: Book: Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning
Body:
From https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/lllt.45/main
Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning: Pedagogical potential and research agenda
Edited by Masatoshi Sato and Susan Ballinger
Published by the John Benjamins Publishing Company
This volume represents the first collection of empirical studies focusing on peer interaction for L2 learning. These studies aim to unveil the impact of mediating variables such as task type, mode of interaction, and social relationships on learners’ interactional behaviors and language development in this unique and pedagogically powerful learning context. To examine these issues, contributors employed quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods designs as well as cognitive, social, and sociocognitive theoretical frameworks. The majority of the studies are classroom based and were conducted in a rich array of settings covering five continents and encompassing a wide range of learner L1s and target languages. These settings include second and foreign language classrooms from primary to university level, content-based programs, online contexts, and after-school programs. To span the divide between research and practice, each study includes a section suggesting pedagogical implications.
Visit the publisher’s website at https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/lllt.45/main
Source: John Benjamins Publishing Company
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Title: Book: Introducing Sign Language Literature
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From https://he.palgrave.com/page/detail/?sf1=barcode&st1=9781137363817&loc=uk
Introducing Sign Language Literature: Folklore and Creativity
By Rachel Sutton-Spence and Michiko Kaneko
Published by Palgrave Macmillan
Introducing Sign Language Literature: Folklore and Creativity is the first textbook dedicated to analyzing and appreciating sign language storytelling, poetry and humor. The authors assume no prior knowledge of sign language or literary studies, introducing readers to a world of visual language creativity in deaf communities.
Introducing Sign Language Literature: Folklore and Creativity
• Explains in straightforward terms the unique features of this embodied language art form
• Draws on an online anthology of over 150 sign language stories, poems and jokes
• Suggests ways of analyzing and appreciating the rich artistic heritage of deaf communities
Visit the publisher’s website at https://he.palgrave.com/page/detail/?sf1=barcode&st1=9781137363817&loc=uk
Source: Palgrave Macmillan
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