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From http://www.eltresearchbites.com/

Mura Nava summarizes a 2015 study by Kristan Davin and Francis Troyan, "The Implementation of High‐Leverage Teaching Practices: From the University Classroom to the Field Site." The conclusion: "[K]nowledge about teaching or reflection on teaching is no substitute for enacting teaching. That is, for us as teachers to rehearse core practices and bring them under our conscious control. The research on high-leverage teaching practices holds promise for partly bridging the research-practice divide."

Read the research summary at http://www.eltresearchbites.com/201802-high-leverage-teaching-practices/

From https://weteachlang.com/2018/03/02/ep-42-with-daniel-woolsey/

In episode 42 of the We Teach Languages podcast series, Daniel Woolsey, an associate professor of Spanish at a liberal arts college in Michigan, explains that language teachers can focus on critical cultural content, let go of explicit grammar instruction, and trust the acquisition process to take place.

Listen to the podcast at https://weteachlang.com/2018/03/02/ep-42-with-daniel-woolsey/

From http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

Your students can work on their presentational skills by making podcasts. In this blog post Richard Byrne shares ten ideas for classroom podcasts: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2018/02/ten-ideas-for-classroom-podcasts.html#.WpmUeBPwaYU

By Logan Matz, CASLS Fellow

Reciprocal Peer Tutoring (RPT) is a useful tool that allows learners to use their peers as sources of information. This activity helps build a stronger classroom community by having learners take responsibility for their learning and increase learner agency.

Objectives: Students will be able to:

• Identify key information in a problem
• Use learned knowledge to assist each other
• Appraise peers’ solutions and judge usefulness of solution

Modes: Any, depending on the peer tutoring sessions

Materials needed: Notebook, textbook for reference (if using), handout

Procedure:

1. Introduce the topic of problem solving. Point out that for this activity, students will be working with their peers to help tackle challenging language functions they may have been struggling with.
2. Students pair off. The structure of this is variable. If your classroom has a naturally-occurring group of more advanced learners and one of less advanced learners, this is a good time to match a higher-level and lower-level student in a pair group. If your classroom is more heterogeneous in ability, random pairing is fine.
3. Explain that each student in the pair will get a chance to help and be helped with a function they’ve been struggling with. This can include:
   1. Comparing and contrasting
   2. Persuading
   3. Asking questions
   4. Expressing likes/dislikes
   5. Cause and effect
   6. Summarizing
   7. Sequencing
   8. Predicting
   9. Agreeing/disagreeing
   10. Etc.
4. Have each pair choose a person to start at random.
5. The starting student should then think of three questions related to what they have been struggling with. For example, if their chosen function is asking questions, they could ask their partner, “What is something I should avoid when asking questions?” or “When I ask a question, am I being polite enough?”
6. The second student then takes on the role of tutor, attempting to solve or help with the issue of the first student. If the peer tutor doesn’t know where to begin, they can use the Peer Tutor Handout to get started. It lists a few questions to try and break out of a rut if both tutor and tutee are stuck.
7. After pairs have had a chance to work through a problem, students will switch roles and repeat steps 4-5.
8. After both students in each pair have had a chance to perform both roles, the teacher can bring the class back to a group discussion. Pairs will share problems and solutions. If any students were stuck (i.e. their tutors were unable to come up with a solution), the pair can share how they worked through the handout. After that, this is the time for the whole class to offer suggestions. The teacher should try to let students take charge of the discussion and provide input only when necessary.

Notes: This activity is highly flexible to adapt to not only varying proficiency levels but also learner backgrounds. Most foreign language classrooms will have higher-proficient and lower-proficient non-native speakers. However, if you have a certain number of expert and non-expert speakers in the class, those two groups can be mixed together during pairing. This allows the expert speakers (heritage learners, more advanced learners, etc.) to provide tutoring and assistance from an intuition standpoint, while the non-expert speakers provides an external viewpoint from which to examine features of the L2. Overall, the focus should be on meaning making, so that neither student gets discouraged or bogged down by grammatical precision.

CASLS is partnering with Professor Lisa Freinkel, special assistant to the provost, on the development of a mobile application that promotes digital mindfulness: intentional, reflective use toward and with digital technology.

“AnalogU is different than other digital mindfulness apps in that it prompts learners to notice how their devices affect their emotions and thoughts,” says Professor Freinkel. “After learners notice how they feel, they can decide to make different choices.”

The app, AnalogU, guides users through mindful awareness of their digital technology use by examining the most habitually deployed features in the digital realm, such as push notifications, color schemes, and liking/unliking behaviors.

This guided exploration occurs as learners teach a robot in the application what being human is like. In doing so, learners begin to explore their own emotions and reactions, and then learn how they could make more intentional choices.

The mobile app grew from Professor Freinkel’s co-curricular initiative she led as then-dean of the Division of Undergraduate Studies.

CASLS plans to complete development of the prototype this academic year and launch the app’s first iteration in the residence halls in fall 2018.

• Interpret descriptions.
• Create their own descriptions.
• Construct a visual representation of a description using mind maps.
• Discuss how media impact their perceptions.

The purpose of this activity is to encourage students to learn and practice a thinking routine that they can use inside and outside of the classroom. The thinking routine is: Observe. Analyze. Extend. This routine promotes a contextualized approach to meaning making. Practicing this routine will help students wade deeper into self-directed participation with the target language and culture. It provides a reliable sequence of actions which can be easily adapted to structure participation in new and uncertain citations.

Learning Objectives: Students will be able to…

• Use the thinking routine Observe, Analyze, Extend to participate in an online forum.
• Comment on posts in an online forum.
• Share a personal status on an online forum.

Mode: Interpersonal 

Materials Needed: Student access to Instagram posts in the target language (e.g. Spanish Google search “Instagram en Español” https://www.instagram.com/p/Be_ERbTB-ng/?taken-by=instagrames), Option 1 or Option 2 of the handout

Procedure:

1          Set the Stage: Explain to learners that their goal for the day is to learn how to use the thinking routine Observe, Analyze, Extend. It is important to communicate to students that by practicing this routine on their own they will become better at using the target language on the fly in situations both in and out of the classroom. Also, share with your class that the idea is to start by practicing the routine in a low stakes environment (like online) and then begin to apply it in more challenging contexts down the road, like participating at a social function. Introduce the worksheet and demonstrate how to fold it into fourths so that one Observe, Analyze, Extend sequence appears in each quadrant.

2          Observe: Have students work individually or in groups to find an appropriate Instagram post in the target language. Under the “Observe” heading in one quadrant on the worksheet, have students list the things they see in their post, both in the subject matter of the photo and in the text of the post and comments. Remind them that the point of this first stage is simply to record their observations, and not to interpret what they see.

Key questions to ponder:

• What objects do I see in the photo (e.g. people, cats, food)?
• What words are used in this post?
• What words are used in the comments?
• How much communication is happening between these people?
• What is the context where the communication is playing out?

3          Analyze: Ask learners to discuss their observations as a class and record the most interesting findings in the same quadrant of their worksheet as before.

Key questions to ponder:

• What does this communication mean (to me)?
• Can I read the emotional tone of this interaction?
• Can I describe the level of formality being used?
• What are the most significant words in the post and comments?
• Does the photo change how words might be interpreted?           
• Does anything seem out of place, inappropriate, or off topic?
• If so, can you explain why?

4          Extend: Once the post is observed and analyzed it is time to personally engage. Give students time to consider and plan their interaction with the post they have been working with. In the same quadrant as before, have them record a description of their chosen action under the “Extend” heading on the worksheet.

Key questions to ponder:

• What do I want to do with the information I gained from my observation and analysis?
• Do I have enough information to participate on the forum in the way I would like? If not, can I describe my difficulty?
• If I wanted to participate in this forum, how might I start?
• If I wanted to participate in this interaction more fully, what would I need to be able to do better?

Reminder: Remind students that they can practice this routine on their own to become better at using the target language on the fly, in situations both inside and outside of the classroom.

Practice

Have learners self-select to work individually or in pairs to compose and submit their own posts and comments using their notes or other available resources.

By Logan Matz, CASLS Fellow

As language educators, we often have a crucial role in bridging the gap between the various communities our students, friends, and neighbors inhabit. This activity is designed to help teachers and learners work together to develop prudent goals that help and enable your students and their language learning via service learning (SL).

Students will be able to:

• Develop overall goals and enable sub-goals along a realistic timeline
• Narrow the scope of goals to focus on student learning and local community impact
• Evaluate peer goals for appropriateness relating to content, time, and alignment with overall project goals

Modes: Any, depending on the nature of the SL project

Materials needed: SL Goal Setting Handout

Procedure:

1. An essential step in a successful service learning project is the goal-setting phase. Here, divide your learners in groups and let them choose their own topics. Ideally, these will be topics that they feel passionate about.
2. Once your learners have selected a topic, have them brainstorm 3-5 overall goals to achieve with the project. Learners will use the first part of the SL Goal Setting Handout for this task.
3. Next, have your learners move on to the second part of the Handout. For each of their main goals, learners will ask themselves, “What do I need to achieve this?”

Example: Students choose to focus on a community health project related to breastfeeding in the local Hispanic community. If a main goal is “to be able to communicate effectively about breastfeeding,” learners might include “learn specialized vocab needed to talk about breastfeeding,” “learn cultural norms surrounding breastfeeding in Hispanic communities,” or “find and assess currently available community health resources.” While there is no requirement regarding how many of these sub-goals that learners define, work to help them make sure that they have broken down their main goals into manageable chunks.

4. Next, help learners make sure that their goals have a narrow enough focus to be effective at addressing the stated problem, as well as enhance their language learning. This can be done in a class discussion on appropriate scope for goals (for example, reminding learners that it’s not possible to solve every single problem at once). Alternatively, this step can be incorporated in Step 5.
5. Finally, pair up project groups (depending on size) and give each group a chance to share their goals and sub-goals with the paired group. The second group can then give advice about whether the goals of the first group align with the topic and content, whether they’ve set up a reasonable time frame, and whether their sub-goals align and make sense within their larger goals.

Notes:

• A possible adaptation would be to let learners work individually instead of in groups.
• Another way to have learners evaluate the feasibility of their goals (Step 4) is to make sure that they are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely) goals.

Do you use the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements or LinguaFolio as part of your curriculum? Complete a short survey to help NCSSFL  create effective resources for you. http://bit.ly/2Iol2DN

From https://www.mla.org/content/download/83540/2197676/2016-Enrollments-Short-Report.pdf

Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Summer 2016 and Fall 2016: Preliminary Report
By Dennis Looney and Natalia Lusin
Published by the Modern Language Association

Since 1958, the Modern Language Association (MLA) has gathered and analyzed data on undergraduate and graduate course enrollments in languages other than English in United States colleges and universities. The previous census, the twenty-third, examined language enrollments in fall 2013. In 2016, the MLA conducted the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth censuses simultaneously, covering summer 2016 and fall 2016. This is the first time since 1971 that the MLA has gathered data on summer enrollments.

From 1958 through 2009, the MLA conducted its censuses with the support of the United States Department of Education. In 2013, the census was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Security Educational Program, and in 2016 it was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This report is the first of two that will analyze the findings of the 2016 MLA language enrollment censuses. This preliminary report presents our findings in broad terms; the fine-grained analysis will follow in the full, second report.

Access the report at https://www.mla.org/content/download/83540/2197676/2016-Enrollments-Short-Report.pdf