We at the Institute for Language Education in Transcultural Context (ILETC) are excited to announce two professional development opportunities for language instructors in the 2018-2019 academic year. Please click on the title of each workshop for additional details, including how to apply.

Collaborative Curriculum Development: Workshop for Heritage Spanish Courses

Project-Based Language Learning for the Chinese Classroom

General Information

As is the case with all professional development activities conducted by ILETC, the workshops offered  during this academic year are guided by a combination of theoretical and pedagogical frameworks that are applicable to both L2 and heritage language education:

• Language Acquisition. We adhere to the theory that acquiring a language entails the development of an implicit linguistic system and that such development does not take place without input (Krashen, S. D. (1982). Acquiring a Second Language. World Englishes, 1: 97-101.)
• Proficiency. We understand language proficiency within the framework of the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, 2012 (https://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/actfl-proficiency-guidelines-2012.)
• Intercultural Communicative Competence. We approach the teaching of culture in the language class as the development of a person’s ability to successfully navigate between more than one language and cultural system (Byram, M. (2000). Assessing intercultural competence in language teaching. Sprogforum, 18(6), 8‐13.)
• Critical Pedagogy. We recognize the centrality of curricula informed by sociolinguistic principles regarding language and power, language varieties, and language and identity. Critical pedagogy approaches provide effective classroom practices to understand, reflect on, and analyze such principles (Leeman, J. & Serafini, E. (2016). Sociolinguistics and heritage language education: A model for promoting critical translingual competence. In Marta Fairclough and Sara Beaudrie (Eds.) Innovative Strategies for Heritage Language Teaching. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 56-79.)