Collegiate Foreign Language Research Articles

Making Podcasts in the Collegiate French Writing Course

This study argues for grounding the teaching of presentational communication in a foreign language (FL) in Making- and Design-related concepts. We use the example of creating personal narrative podcasts in an advanced collegiate FL course to demonstrate how these concepts facilitate student learning outcomes in relation to genre awareness, digital literacy, and student engagement in presentational writing and speaking. A description is provided of the process of gaining understanding and carrying out thematic, generic, linguistic, and technical components of podcasting—a task that student self-reflections revealed as challenging yet ultimately rewarding.

Affirming the context of instructed SLA: The potential of curricular thinking

Offered as a conceptual and programmatic piece, this article suggests that, due to its explicit educational orientation, the domain of instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) is challenged to align theoretical choices, research preferences, and educational practices in the interest of improving instructed L2 learning. It addresses the current disjuncture by proposing the constructs of ‘development’ along with ‘curricular thinking’, particularly when they are informed by complexity theory, in order to accomplish three interrelated goals: first, to specify a given educational context in a manner that allows for principled inquiry into how instructed L2 learning evolves in that setting; second, to affirm and operationalize its longitudinal trajectory in a traceable and actionable manner; and, third, to embed the situated and contingent forms of ‘doing teaching’ and ‘doing learning’ within a framework that gives them meaning, value, and significance for long-term development. The article discusses core issues arising from such an approach and briefly exemplifies it with curriculum development in a collegiate foreign language (FL) department. It concludes with a consideration of benefits for ISLA.

Conceptualizing cultural literacy through student learning outcomes assessment

AbstractStudent learning outcomes (SLO) assessment is often perceived as a burdensome, top‐down process driven by institutional requirements. Recent research has thus called for discipline‐specific models of SLO assessment to more deeply engage postsecondary faculty in determining what constitutes student learning within their programs. In response, this article presents a recursive process of developing and applying a model of cultural literacy to SLO assessment documents from one foreign language (FL) department comprising multiple BA programs. The study has two interrelated parts: (1) operationalizing the concept of cultural literacy, and (2) analyzing assessment documents using qualitative content analysis. Findings show that cultural literacy is characterized by eight unique factors evident across FL program assessment documents to varying degrees. This measurable definition of cultural literacy can facilitate the alignment of goals and outcomes with disciplinary principles and has implications for curriculum development and instructional practices in collegiate FL programs.

Analysing foreign language instructional materials through the lens of the multiliteracies framework

ABSTRACTLiteracy, understood as a socially situated process of making meaning from texts, has been offered as a conceptual solution to collegiate foreign language curricular divisions, and multiliteracies pedagogy as a means of implementing that solution. Within multiliteracies pedagogy, the knowledge processes framework [Kalantzis, M., Cope, B., Chan, E., & Dalley-Trim, L. (2016). Literacies (2nd ed.). Melbourne: Cambridge University Press] facilitates deep engagement with texts and development of advanced language and literacy skills. As more programmes adopt this conceptualisation of literacy as a programmatic goal, additional research is needed to understand how this framework is applied in materials design and implementation. In response, this article documents the materials analysis of multiliteracies lesson plans developed as part of a revised lower-level collegiate Spanish curriculum. Using the knowledge process framework as an analytical lens, study participants examined 25 lessons targeting interpretive communication from two different courses. Results reveal an overwhelming emphasis on the knowledge process of experiencing; the knowledge processes of conceptualising, analysing, and applying occur much less frequently. The authors discuss conceptual and pedagogical factors contributing to the findings and implications for teacher development and student learning in collegiate foreign language contexts.

Researching literacies and textual thinking in collegiate foreign language programs: Reflections and recommendations

This article reflects on the literacy turn in collegiate foreign language (FL) programs, taking as its central argument that the focus in FL curriculum, instruction, and research should not be on the content we teach, be it language, literature, or culture, but rather on textual thinking and literacies development. After providing a snapshot of findings from previous research, the article focuses on the need for scholarly innovation to fully understand and realize the potential of a literacies and textual thinking orientation for unifying collegiate FL programs. Six future research areas are recommended and discussed: operationalizing key concepts; reconsidering the notion of text in collegiate FL programs; exploring the sociocultural dimension of literacy; building transferable skills and cross‐disciplinary collaborations; investigating connections among literacies, textual thinking, and ACTFL guidelines and standards; and supporting instructors’ implementation of literacies‐based pedagogies.

Digital Tasks for Advanced Learners: The Case of La Princesse de Clèves

Literature remains central in courses for upper-level students in many undergraduate French programs in the United States. However, traditional approaches to teaching literature may not engage students in ways that are relevant to their twenty-first-century realities. In this article we describe an approach to teaching La Princesse de Clèves that incorporates a real-life research task, using a digital platform to give students a sense of the adventure of literary analysis. Ultimately, we propose that this approach represents the kind of rethinking necessary for literary study to maintain its place in the collegiate foreign language curriculum.

Overcoming Curricular Bifurcation: A Departmental Approach to Curriculum Reform1

AbstractThe collegiate foreign language profession has become increasingly aware of the unnecessarily detrimental effects of bifurcated curricula on student learning and departmental governance, yet there have been few instances to date of departments that have been able to achieve unified, articulated programs of study. This article presents one foreign language department's initiatives and activities to do just that. We describe the collaborative process that the German Studies Department at Emory University underwent in its full‐scale revision of the undergraduate curriculum. The chairperson begins the description by explaining his role in the reform process. Other faculty members continue the description by outlining the institutional and department context, the impetus for reform, the curriculum's theoretical framework, and the different curricular levels. An ongoing, multi‐year project, the revised curriculum has placed demands on students and faculty but also indicated promise for enhanced departmental identity and student learning.

Expanding Role of Technology in Foreign Language Teacher Education Programs

The advent of the technological era continues to impact foreign language education in numerous ways. Current and future foreign language educators must learn to effectively and meaningfully merge technology with instructional practices and activities. This responsibility necessitates a thorough and realistic understanding of the various functions, uses, strengths, and limitations of technology in education settings. A logical starting place for teachers to gain knowledge and expertise with technology is teacher education programs at the college level. The purposes of this article are (a) to highlight and explain some of the expanding roles and affordances of technology in a collegiate foreign language education program and (b) to encourage continued research and development of instructional technology in teacher education programs. Rather than focusing on one particular class, this article illustrates how technology can be an integral and cohesive programmatic component interwoven throughout teacher candidates' entire academic careers.

Study Abroad, Foreign Language Use, and the Communities Standard

AbstractAlthough participation in multilingual communities around the world has been understood to be the raison d'être for foreign language study, the Communities standard has been portrayed as an extracurricular experience and more difficult to weave into instruction than the other standards. This article addresses two questions: (1) Does a study abroad experience facilitate meeting the Communities standard? and (2) How can collegiate foreign language curricula enhance the study abroad experience and fulfillment of the Communities standard? Current trends in study abroad participation by U.S. undergraduates and key research findings on study abroad related to the Communities standard are reviewed. Numerous recommendations for programmatic courses of action at home and abroad targeting a fuller consideration of the Communities standard in collegiate foreign language study are offered.

Of frameworks and the goals of collegiate foreign language education: critical reflections

AbstractThe paper suggests that among reasons for the difficulties collegiate foreign language (FL) programs in the United States (and most likely elsewhere) encounter in assuring that their students attain the kind of upper-level multiple literacies necessary for engaging in sophisticated work with FL oral and written texts may be the fact that prevailing frameworks for capturing FL performance, development, and assessment are insufficient for envisioning such textually oriented learning goals. The result of this mismatch between dominant frameworks, typically associated with communicative language teaching, and the goals of literary cultural studies programs as humanities programs is that collegiate FL departments and their faculty members face serious obstacles in their efforts to create the kind of coherent, comprehensive, and principled curricula that would be necessary for overcoming what are already extraordinary challenges in an educational environment that provides little support for long-term, sustained efforts at language development toward advanced multiple literacies. The paper traces these links by examining three such frameworks in the United States: the Proficiency framework of the 1980s, based on the ACTFL oral proficiency interview, the Standards framework of the 1990s, part of a more general standards movement in U.S. education, and the most recent document, by the Modern Language Association (MLA), which focuses on the need for new curricular structures in collegiate FL education. Specifically, it provides an overview of the U.S. educational landscape with an eye toward the considerable influence such frameworks can have in the absence of a comprehensive language education policy; lays out key characteristics that would be necessary for a viable approach to collegiate FL education; probes the complex effects the three frameworks have had in collegiate FL programs; and explores how one department sought to counter-act their detrimental influence in order to affirm and realize a humanistically oriented approach to FL education. The paper concludes with overall observations about the increasing power of frameworks to set educational goals and ways to counteract their potentially unwelcome consequences.

Author Bios, Figures and Tables, Acronyms Used, References

This monograph presents in detail the genesis, design, and implementation of a full‐scale curricular innovation in a U.S. university German foreign language studies program, with a primary focus on writing development. Its goal is to demonstrate and articulate how college educators, from typically diverse scholarly persuasions, might conjointly craft a much‐needed response to calls for change in tertiary foreign language and cultural studies departments. After sketching the contemporary landscape of and challenges in collegiate foreign language studies, it theorizes an approach to educational design that is at once theoretically grounded in genre‐based literacy development, legitimately responsive to both literary‐cultural and language developmental values of faculty, and practically focused on student achievement of very advanced learning outcomes. Turning from ideation to application, the monograph then reports extensively on the actual curricular scope and sequence, genre‐based pedagogies, and associated assessment practices that were developed and implemented in a four‐year undergraduate German program. The emphasis throughout the monograph is on explaining why and how decisions were made while also demonstrating the outcomes of these decisions in the form of practicable educational efforts and products. It closes by arguing the need for additional inquiry‐driven program innovation of the sort reported here, if the value of college foreign language studies is to be enhanced, perpetuated, and, fundamentally, realized.

Table of Contents

This monograph presents in detail the genesis, design, and implementation of a full‐scale curricular innovation in a U.S. university German foreign language studies program, with a primary focus on writing development. Its goal is to demonstrate and articulate how college educators, from typically diverse scholarly persuasions, might conjointly craft a much‐needed response to calls for change in tertiary foreign language and cultural studies departments. After sketching the contemporary landscape of and challenges in collegiate foreign language studies, it theorizes an approach to educational design that is at once theoretically grounded in genre‐based literacy development, legitimately responsive to both literary‐cultural and language developmental values of faculty, and practically focused on student achievement of very advanced learning outcomes. Turning from ideation to application, the monograph then reports extensively on the actual curricular scope and sequence, genre‐based pedagogies, and associated assessment practices that were developed and implemented in a four‐year undergraduate German program. The emphasis throughout the monograph is on explaining why and how decisions were made while also demonstrating the outcomes of these decisions in the form of practicable educational efforts and products. It closes by arguing the need for additional inquiry‐driven program innovation of the sort reported here, if the value of college foreign language studies is to be enhanced, perpetuated, and, fundamentally, realized.

An Essay on the Role of Language in Collegiate Foreign Language Programmatic Reform1

This position paper argues that collegiate foreign language (FL) education has lost sight of the central role that language plays in the profession. Regardless of one's sub‐field within foreign language education (i.e., linguistic, literary, or cultural studies), the profession shares the common focus of exploring how to make and interpret meaning in and through language. The paper therefore recommends that an acknowledgement of and re‐commitment to this foundational principle provides common ground to effect the types of change within departments that have long been called: the integration of upper‐ and lower‐level instruction; the reform of graduate student teacher education to foster curricular thinking; the explicit and systematic attention to the development of advanced language abilities; and the establishment of a collaborative departmental culture centered around publicly shared beliefs and concerns.

The Discipline of Foreign Language Studies and Reforming Foreign Language Education

I read with great interest the position paper of the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Lan guages. The committee is to be applauded for ad dressing issues and suggesting possible solutions that have been an agreed upon mainstay of the professional conversation for many years, though not necessarily at the MLA. In fact, I view this re port as an effort by the MLA to regain a voice in the area of collegiate foreign language (FL) education. It is to be welcomed by anybody who wants to see the MLA as a strong, relevant voice in advocating for (collegiate) FL instruction in the United States. Borrowing a phrase used by the committee, I will be ungraciously blunt in my comments. Criticism, as they say, can be a particularly gen erous kind of praise. But before addressing the content of the report, I want to make these obser vations about its creation. It is unfortunate that

Kaleidoscope of Language Learning

we have students. Often we have disagreements among professionals concerning most effective methodologies or materials or technologies for in struction. However, some significant issues appear to stay with us unresolved decade after decade. In May of 2007 the Executive Council of the MLA released the document Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World, based on the work of an ad hoc committee on foreign languages, which had been appointed by the council in 2004 to study the mat ter. This document points at agenda items that continue to present themselves in the areas of pol icy, research, institutional organization, curricu lum, and pedagogy. In this document before the Modern Language Journal readership, Transform ing Collegiate Foreign Language Departments, the committee made specific recommendations in the areas of research, coalition building, advo cacy, and configuration of foreign language de partments in American colleges and universities. The numerous institutions of higher education present many models of language departments in terms of organizational structure, curriculum, size, faculty, institutional requirements, finances, administrative support, technological sophistica tion, pedagogical emphases, and student out comes. The kaleidoscope of settings thus provides an infinite number of variations and possibilities for language learning. Having spent the last 4 decades primarily in the community college en vironment, my view is necessarily formed by the colors and patterns of the 2-year college setting. Change does not have to be large and dramatic in order to effect a difference in the environ ment. One click of the wheel of a kaleidoscope can produce a fantastic new image with a great modification in impact for the viewer. Likewise, a single change in a department can make a dra matic difference to the faculty and students in that institution.

Meeting the Demands: The Circularity of Remodeling Collegiate Foreign Language Programs

1 With deepest thanks to Robin Worth, Ph.D., for her assistance in preparing this contribution. 2Number of bachelor's degrees conferred by major (1995-2005) were compared by overall 10-year and most recent 5-year averages across French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and several other foreign language majors. With the exception of Spanish, all languages had an equal or lower average number of degrees con ferred in the most recent 5-year period as compared to the overall 10-year period (UW-Madison Office of Academic Planning and Analysis, January 2006). 3 A recent glance at the ADFL job list found no fewer than 38 postings that included expertise in SLA in the position description. Not only was this area of exper tise often required for positions dedicated to language teaching, curriculum, and program direction, but it also was required or considered highly desirable for a num ber of literature specialist positions, at institutions both large and small.

The Importance of Program Evaluation in Collegiate Foreign Language Programs

The Importance of Program Evaluation in Collegiate Foreign Language Programs

Integrating Textual Thinking into the Introductory College-Level Foreign Language Classroom

One of the characteristics of the well-documented bifurcation in collegiate foreign language (FL) instruction is the difficult transition from lower- to upper-level instruction. Particularly pronounced are the expectations placed on readers at the upper level. No longer engaged in surface readings and sentence-level exercises that stay focused on everyday situations with clear intent and unambiguous meaning, learners at the upper level must shift to supersentential and discourse-level processing of texts that contain a significantly higher level of abstraction and ambiguity. Recognizing that preparation for such an approach to reading requires long-term attention, this article explores the pedagogical feasibility of implementing in beginning instruction the type of textual thinking and reading practiced at upper levels. Implemented in two sections of first-semester German (N= 27) while students read a full-length novel, this pedagogical approach centers on developing beginning learners' ability to see texts as message systems that reveal cultural significance.

The role of task and task-based assessment in a content-oriented collegiate foreign language curriculum

This article explores the role of task and task-based assessment in a collegiate foreign language (FL) department that shifted its entire undergraduate curriculum from a form-based normative approach to a language-use and language-meaning orientationfor instruction. It examines how the demands for specificity that characterize task-based assessment contributed significantly to an enhanced knowledge base and a new educational culture on the part of practitioners, faculty and graduate students, primarily in literary cultural studies. Deeper insights were obtained not only in terms of assessment but also with regard to the relationship between (1) curriculum, instruction and learning goals and (2) outcomes in such an adult FL program and, ultimately, with regard to possibilities for an expansive interpretation of the notion of task itself.