Documenting language and content integrated learning: a case study of a genre-based history in films course

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, we explore how advanced college students use the past history and experiences of others to understand the present while learning a foreign language through a content-integrated curriculum. To assess student learning we operationalize Norris (2006. “The Why (and How) of Assessing Student Learning Outcomes in College Foreign Language Programs.” The Modern Language Journal 90 (4): 576–583) learning outcomes model (content, skills and dispositions) through linguistic indices. The learning is documented throughout a semester via learners’ written production, comparing the changes and expansion in the use of meaning-making resources that demonstrate their understanding of others through choices in the wording, logical organization of texts, and their positioning in relation to those contents. The participants have varied language trajectories ranging from heritage to L2 language learners of Spanish. The findings show how a content and language integrated curriculum focusing on a historical theme (i.e. Southern Cone dictatorships) through a particular genre (i.e. film review) can reveal students’ content, skills and dispositions in an L2. Learners demonstrated their developing capacities in a foreign language and history through their production of written texts that allow them to use knowledge about the past to interpret the present via academic genres. The paper provides a framework for describing content, skills and dispositions learning outcomes with linguistic features that evidence the achievement of those outcomes.