Literacy FL Teaching

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This graduate-level seminar focuses on developing requisite foundational knowledge and critical awareness of various practical approaches to foreign language instruction in the American educational context, particularly at the college level (e.g., communicative, task-based, ecological-semiotic, etc.). Students become informed about (1) cognitive, socio-cultural, linguistic, and affective factors influencing the principles and processes of learning, particularly instructed second language learning; (2) the historical, educational, institutional, and curricular context within which instruction takes place; (3) pedagogical approaches to developing adult learners’ second language ability; and (4) the roles they could and should take on as teachers in order to enhance student learning. Special emphasis in the course is on the literacy-oriented approaches to FL teaching that aim to integrate language and content instruction and thus address the challenges identified by the FL professionals today (e.g., MLA 2007 report). Students explore ways of transcending the language/content divide and developing curricula and courses where it becomes possible to address various thematic areas and at the same time explicitly attend to advanced language development. To that end, students analyze discourses of textual and media genres (e.g., personal and public narratives, political appeal, speech, exposition, recipe, catastrophe film, political poster, etc.), design instructional sequences based on these analyses and construct text-based tasks that facilitate adult second language acquisition. All of the activities in the course recognize various backgrounds in SLA theory and teaching practice and draw on them to socialize students into becoming self-directed and reflective teachers, a life-long process. Assignments: • Readings, classroom and online discussions • Class observations • 2 Journals and 3 classroom observation reports • Text didacticization • Semester project (Qualified undergraduate students interested in teaching foreign languages may be allowed to enroll.)