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We discover languages and cultures through making Connections, thus we tie our newsletter theme of Connections neatly to ACTFL’s Discover Languages month. Our Feature Author, Jean W. LeLoup, makes connections inside and outside the classroom. Nada M. Salem continues her exploration of teaching culture of LCTLs by examining the attitudes students bring with them to class and getting adequate training for teachers. In Crossroads in the Classroom Jack Dalton, Alaska Native, brings a unique look at the way languages used in a story open up a wealth of knowledge about a culture. In Sound Bites, Marcel LaVergne asks, “Is this a Spanish class or a geography class taught in Spanish?” Margaret E. Malone provides us with a template for assessing a performance task based on connections in our Testing Tips column. YANA, aka Sheila W. Cockey, makes connections using reflexive verbs. Jill reviews the survey for Tech for Teachers and offers lots of on-line resources and ideas. In our Special Column Mackenzie Phillips tells us about updates to the Foreign Language Assessment Directory. Thus, we present a variety of ways to connect within our profession and with the world beyond. |
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NCLRC Summer Institutes 2012 now open!
- Using Backward Design And Standards-Based Instruction
- Understanding Assessment
- Developing Listening Comprehension Skills
- Teaching Spanish To Heritage Spanish Speakers
- Spanish Language And Culture: Embassies Of Spain And Uruguay / 3-Day Immersion
Summer Institute For Teachers Of Spanish
- Supporting The 5 Cs With 21st Century Skills
Register NOW
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Announcements:
- The NCLRC 2012 Summer Institutes are open for registration. Register NOW
- Summer institute for K-16 and community language teachers, administrators, and researchers
The National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC) and the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages are considering offering a summer institute for K-16 and community language teachers, administrators, and researchers to understand issues, principles, and instructional strategies for teaching heritage language learners. Participants will explore a diverse range of topics, including the design of their own curricula and lesson plans, differentiating instruction for diverse learners, selecting assessments and authentic materials, and implementing the ACTFL standards in curriculum development.
Anup P. Mahajan (Executive Director, NCLRC) and Joy Peyton (Director, Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages) invite you to complete a 10-minute survey, by April 20th, to help us assess the interest of heritage language educators in participating in a workshop like this in the Washington, DC area. We also ask that you forward this survey to anyone for whom this institute would be of interest. You may fill out the survey online at this website: http://nclrc-aahl.weebly.com/index.html.
- Online Course on Assessment Basics
The Oral Proficiency Assessment Team at the Center for Applied Linguistics is excited to announce the opening of a new online course! Assessment for Language Instructors: The Basics will provide world language instructors with an understanding of the fundamentals of assessment.
The course lasts five weeks and includes five units. Please apply individually via our registration survey by April 9.
Enrollment is free of charge but is limited to the first 40 applicants.
- The 2012 calendar of conferences, courses, and grants/fellowships is filling up quickly. Check it out for an event near you in our Teachers' Calendar.
- If there is a national or regional conference you would like us to list, please contact us at info@nclrc.org
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 Feature article |
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Making Connections Inside and Outside the Foreign Language Classroom
By Jean W. LeLoup, USAF Academy & FLTEACH
The topic of Connections is one of great importance in the foreign language (FL) teaching field. One of the National Standards (2006) goal areas, the concept of making connections, networking, and linking is pervasive in our profession. Think about all the ways we language teachers need to and do connect in our daily professional and personal lives.
Read more... |
| Testing Tips |
Performance Task for Assessing Connections
By Margaret E. Malone, Ph.D., Center for Applied Linguistics
This year, The NCLRC Language Resource is focusing each issue on one of the 5 C’s of the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities, and each Testing Tips column presents an assessment task that targets the C that is the focus of its issue. … This issue, we have provided a sample task to assess connections, which highlights how world language learning is connected to other content areas. This is a rich and complicated standard to assess because it is always a challenge to ensure that we are assessing not the content area but rather what students have learned in the target language about the content area.
Read more... |
| Crossroads in the Classroom |
Storytelling: A window on values and world view
By Jack Dalton, Raven Feathers and the Wind
I am Alaska Native. I am considered a tradition bearer. I am a storyteller. And yet, my only way to understand the power of language and portray its vital role is to speak of a different language: Swedish (Svensk). There are two reasons for this: One, being adopted and growing up in the Western world, I was not exposed to my indigenous tongue, and the rigors of my worldly nomadic life make learning Yup’ik (Yugstun) difficult. Two, I was an exchange student to Sweden. And yet, these languages have more in common than one might see at first glance. Yet, I only realized this recently, 20 years later.
Read more...
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| Special |
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Updates to the Foreign Language Assessment Directory (FLAD) Underway
Mackenzie Price, Center for Applied Linguistics
As part of our partnership with the National Capital language Resource Center (NCLRC), CAL has initiated the first update of the Foreign Language Assessment Directory (FLAD) since 2009. The FLAD is a free, searchable database of world language tests currently used in elementary, middle, secondary, and post-secondary school programs across the United States that can be accessed HERE. Funded by U.S. Department of Education International Research and Studies grant P017A050033, the live directory is managed by CAL’s Oral Proficiency Assessment Team (OPAT) with support from the NCLRC. With information on over 200 tests in 65 languages, the directory helps educators identify and select assessments that best meet their needs. In addition to the directory, the CAL website also hosts a companion tutorial, Understanding Assessment: a Guide for Foreign Language Educators, that introduces key concepts in language testing to aid in appropriate test selection and use of test results.
Read more... |
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| YANA |
Making Connections with Reflexive Verbs
By Sheila W. Cockey, The Language Resource Editor
I need a fresh way to introduce reflexive verbs to my students within the paramaters of the 5 C’s. Any ideas?
Connections and the foreign language classroom go hand-in-hand because we use language to connect us to our actions, thoughts, interactions, and surroundings. Using reflexive verbs can be a challenge to students, so if we create situations in which students must talk about their daily routines we are providing opportunities to perfect their language skill and to connect their new language with their real world.
Read more... |
| Critical Languages |
Teaching Culture; Problems & Solutions Part II
By Nada Salem, Ph.D. Candidate, George Washington University
In the previous issue of this newsletter, I explored two of the problems that teachers of foreign languages in general, and teachers of the Less Commonly Taught Languages in particular, are facing when teaching culture. In this issue, I shall explore two additional problems: (1) dealing with students’ attitudes and perceptions, and (2) lack of adequate training for teachers. Just as teachers need to help students revise their "linguistic patterns," they also need to help them revise their "cultural patterns." … Teachers may not have been adequately trained in the teaching of culture and, therefore, do not have strategies and clear goals that help them create a viable framework for organizing instruction around cultural themes.
Read more... |
| Sound Bites |
Sound Bites for Better Teaching
Making Connections: Is this a Spanish class or is it a geography class taught in Spanish?
By Marcel LaVergne
The Connections Strand of the National Foreign Languages Framework is often falsely equated with Interdisciplinary Education. Its intent is not to turn foreign language teachers into math, science, history, geography, etc. teachers but rather to make them aware of the disciplines that are present in the language texts that they use.
Read more...
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| Tech for Teachers |
Outlining the survey results
By Jill Robbins, Ph.D., Test Developer, Second Language Testing, Inc., Rockville MD
In the last issue, we asked our readers to tell us about their use of instructional technology and what you'd like to know more about. Thanks to everyone who answered. The survey will remain available if you missed your chance to respond earlier. The responses included a few requests for information on some topics we've covered in previous NCLRC newsletters, and there were several requests for information on new topics, which we will cover in future columns.
Read more... |
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