2010 CRITICAL AND INTERCULTURAL THEORY AND LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/71672

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Epilogue. Paradigms in transition
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Phipps, Alison; Levine, Glenn S.
After the MLA report: Rethinking the links between literature and literacy, research, and teaching in foreign language departments
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Arens, Katherine
This chapter takes up today’s literary and cultural theory as lacking attention to research and classroom implementation. The National Standards for Foreign Language Learning, I argue, can be used as a heuristic to develop these missing strategies, as they clarify what is at stake in learning culture. This chapter calls for a more responsible approach to curriculum, at all levels from beginner to graduate/professional, by focusing on appropriate stages of cognitive development and by insisting that the theory project be integrated into concrete and defensible pedagogical goals––an urgent necessity in a moment when institutional demands on humanities departments are forcing the encounter between theory and praxis.
Cognitive grammar and its applicability in the foreign language classroom
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Arnett, Carlee; Jernigan, Harriett
The theory of Cognitive Grammar (CG), despite its compatibility with preferred theories of instruction and teaching methodologies, has yet to make its way into the foreign language classroom. This chapter introduces CG, outlining the basic principles that are most useful in the language classroom: cognitive domains, which function well as instructional tools in a communicative classroom, and the concept of schemas and prototypes, which help students examine the relationships between syntax and meaning. A lesson plan illustrates how one applies the principles of CG to explicit grammar instruction, supplementing students’ grammatical metalanguage and establishing a cognitive domain the instructor can use for future grammar lessons. CG, because it encourages experimentation and interpretation, complements communicative language teaching and speaks to the goals of the report from the Modern Language Association (MLA) Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages (MLA, 2007), which calls for teaching students translingual and transcultural competence at the secondary and postsecondary level.
A social constructivist approach to foreign language writing in online environments
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Elola, Idoia; Oskoz, Ana
While communicative approaches promote collaboration in the classroom, linguistic and cultural content knowledge is often regarded as information to be transferred most effectively from teachers to learners. Applying sociocultural and socioconstructivist perspectives and taking critical pedagogy into consideration, this chapter discusses the implementation of curricular changes into two hybrid Spanish courses: an advanced writing course and a beginning-level Spanish course. The use of social tools such as wikis, chats, and discussion boards not only emphasized collaboration among participants but also generated and developed content and linguistic knowledge in what is called the architecture of participation. The pedagogical shift possible through the use of social tools reshaped the foreign language context setting by expanding the physical classroom into a larger e-classroom and creating writing communities that used a language of their own. Learners actively participated in a community of writers in which, through dialogue, they created knowledge and achieved common goals both through the integration of the group and through their own voice.
Collaboration and interaction: The keys to distance and computer-supported language learning
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Coleman, James A.; Hampel, Regine; Hauck, Mirjam; Stickler, Ursula
This chapter describes the very practical approach to distance and online language learning that has allowed the United Kingdom’s largest university, The Open University (OU), to deliver effective language learning to tens of thousands of students over the past 15 years. It starts from theoretical underpinnings: critical pedagogy, the specifics of adult learners, the achievements and shortcomings of the communicative approach, sociocultural understandings of language learning, and the central role of interaction and collaboration in achieving both linguistic and intercultural outcomes. An enumeration of the particular challenges of learning languages at a distance—facilitating interaction, managing affect, and effectively integrating technologies—is followed by a concise review of the evolution of distance language learning and of relevant research. Issues such as evolving technologies, task design, and student anxiety are also addressed. Distance language education at the OU is conceived not just as a technical challenge but also as an undertaking that engages actively in social issues and the promotion of universal values. The student body is exceptionally inclusive, with a high proportion of disabled and otherwise disadvantaged learners. This social mission adds to the complexity of curriculum design and delivery; neither the materials nor the actual teaching follows conventional models. Providing opportunities for learner interaction is a pedagogic challenge that can be addressed by integrating telecollaborative activities into the language learning experience.
Postcolonial complexities in foreign language education and the humanities
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Train, Robert W.
This chapter develops a critical perspective on foreign language education by drawing on postcolonial theory and research in order to better conceptualize and address the complexity of language education in terms of ecologies of interconnected spaces of policy, curriculum, and classroom practice. Starting from the basic classroom issue of linguistic diversity and variability, this chapter offers a critical approach to language in education that strives to “situate language study in cultural, historical, geographic, and cross-cultural frames within the context of humanistic learning” (Modern Language Association [MLA], 2007, p. 4). This chapter advocates a critical, transcultural, and translinguistic humanism grounded in decolonial practices of foreign language education that are theoretically informed, educationally relevant, socially engaged, and ethically accountable. The chapter also attempts to bring increased historical and critical depth to how foreign language educators understand and perform the teaching of language in ways that connect to transdisciplinary research concerns in the humanities and beyond.
From core curricular to core identities: On critical pedagogy and foreign language/culture education
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Brenner, David
This chapter argues that some form of critical pedagogy should be promoted and sustained in foreign language/culture education despite current ideological and social challenges to the paradigm. It is not readily apparent what form a twenty-first-century critical pedagogy, as a theoretically grounded praxis, should take. One option would be Gerald Graff’s systematic, curriculum-centered approach, which advocates the teaching of academic controversies. A second would derive from a classroom-centered, “bottom-up” approach as represented by Ira Shor, which focuses on the needs and concerns of those we teach. A third model, and the one argued for in this chapter, would develop an identity-centered, psychologically informed approach to developing students’ compassion in relation to others while examining the core causes of human behavior, based primarily on the work of Bracher (2006). At stake is whether foreign language/culture learners might respond to a “prosocial” pedagogy and revise their conventional “information-processing scripts” so as to approach or mediate other languages/ cultures with communicative and also with ethical competence.
Framing ideas from classical language teaching, past and future
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Parker, Jan
The Modern Language Association (MLA) Ad Hoc Committee report (MLA, 2007) raises large questions about the teaching not only of modern languages but of all cultural studies. What was striking were the many challenges that resonate with classical language teaching. In the study and teaching of classical languages, we have access only to vestigial and overtly alien and often alienating texts; the impossibility of mother-tongue competence or total immersion in the other’s culture actually provides a relevantly comparative model of the effect on identity of various kinds of intercultural study and the claims that can be made for such study in a global, complex, and destabilizing world. This chapter thus endorses the call to rethink and disseminate the values of our two related disciplines; it is throughout argued that “theory” should bring all of us into “the MLA project”: to reflect on models, lenses, and paradigms that enable real innovation.
Theorizations of intercultural communication
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Dasli, Maria
Within the fields of applied linguistics and modern language education, intercultural communication has experienced two significant developmental turns. The first I call the traditional view of intercultural communication, which refers to the ability of language learners to confront the cultural practices of the Other with flexibility and tolerance. The second I term the critical view of intercultural communication, which encourages language learners to actively demonstrate their concerns by means of reasoned debate and reflective thinking when entering the intercultural arena. While recent years have seen a shift of focus toward the critical view without, however, dismissing flexible attitudes toward otherness, some language instructors exclusively favor the first view to the detriment of the second. In a time of large-scale migrations mobilized by the recent financial crisis and terrorist threats stimulated by the absence of dialogue between the East and the West, I suggest that we closely focus on the critical view of intercultural communication. Drawing on the works of major intercultural theorists, I discuss how intercultural communication has been brought to a position of refinement while additionally introducing the theory of communicative action (Habermas, 1984, 1989) as a means of elaborating the critical view of intercultural communication.
The health care professional as intercultural speaker
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Lu, Peih-ying; Corbett, John
This chapter considers points of contact and departure between intercultural language education and cross-cultural competence training in medicine. Educators in the fields of language education and medical communication have developed frameworks of intercultural competence that characterize the knowledge, attitudes, and skills that learners can draw on. While competence-based frameworks can guide curricula and audit programs, we argue that a language pedagogy also requires a process-oriented approach, a method of teaching and learning that sees the learner as a situated individual and an increasingly skilled practitioner. Medical students have the opportunity to become active and reflective practitioners in two complementary contexts: problem-based learning and the medical humanities. Additionally, medical students studying in a second or other language have the opportunity to use a variety of resources to explore how language is used in a wide range of health care contexts. Exploration of “authentic” instances of intercultural language encounters as well as online corpora of general and specific English provide an evidence base for the use of language in professional contexts and convey the everyday experience of being a patient, a caregiver, or an advocate.
Toward a contact pragmatics of literature: Habitus, text, and the advanced second-language classroom
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Gramling, David; Warner, Chantelle
Drawing on field/practice theory and pragmatic stylistics, this chapter proposes a new aggregate model for upper-level second-language literature teaching called “contact pragmatics.” While fostering a native-like reading context, teachers can simultaneously encourage students to recognize literature as a form of social practice articulating to various, loosely concentric fields of interpretation: from the native “ratified” reader to the “unintended” second-language reader position. Contact pragmatics shifts pedagogical focus to the interstices, overlaps, misalignments, and disjunctions between these concentric fields, acknowledging that at their center lies a linguistic utterance designed to operate within certain fields of opposition and exchange. Contact pragmatics thus expands the scope of pedagogical inquiry from the historical, national, and cultural resonance of a given text to its social embeddedness in a shifting landscape of linguistic markets. The chapter offers concrete, classroom-based examples of the pedagogical dilemmas and experiences that gave rise to this concept as well as suggestions for how to incorporate it in curricular design.
Understanding comprehension: Hermeneutics, literature, and culture in collegiate foreign language education
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Urlaub, Per
In this chapter, I propose a connection between hermeneutics and foreign language education. This connection generates insights into the process of literary reading in the second language, guides curriculum development, supports the articulation of educational goals, and provides a pedagogical framework for the effective use of cultural materials in the language classroom. Language program directors face many challenges in the context of the implementation of contemporary undergraduate curricula. To achieve effective curricular modifications, language program directors have to engage an entire department, often composed of literary scholars, linguists, and applied linguists. However, this multidisciplinary structure results often in a cacophony of methodological approaches and jargons. A framework to conceive and articulate culture-centered undergraduate curricula that relies not entirely on applied linguistics may therefore contribute the collaborative process of reforming a language program. The chapter introduces insights from both applied linguistics and hermeneutics and shows that fundamental concepts from both fields are congruent. These insights challenge intuitive assumptions of literary reading in the second language, provide the vocabulary to articulate educational goals in an integrated undergraduate curriculum, and reject the traditional two-tier curriculum. Further, I argue that hermeneutics can be of practical value to implement literature and cultural artifacts in the advanced language classroom. I illustrate this claim and demonstrate how hermeneutic theory can guide the didactization of foreign films in relation to their Hollywood remakes.
Classrooms and "real" worlds: Boundaries, roadblocks, and connections
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Van Lier, Leo
In this chapter, I examine the language classroom and its relations to the rest of the world. I take an ecological approach; that is, I focus on the relationships among the various places and situations that members of language classrooms find themselves in and how these relationships are affected by a variety of constraining and enabling factors. In particular, I look at three sets of issues, two of them (named boundaries and roadblocks) constraining and the third (named connections) enabling. The chapter discusses ways in which the various issues raised have been and can be researched and reviews key theories and approaches, including the tension between micro- and macroperspectives and emic and etic perspectives. Questions addressed include the following: How do classrooms turn out the way that they do, and in what ways are they shaped by society or by their inhabitants? What are the factors that promote or limit connections between social ecosystems such as the family, the peer group, and the social/institutional ecosystem of the classroom? The sketch provided here is a very partial one, but in the last part of the chapter, some suggestions are offered that can make the classroom into a learning space that may forge connections between learning and the rest of the students’ lives.
Theorizing translingual/transcultural competence
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Kramsch, Claire
“Translingual and transcultural competence” has been proposed by the 2007 Report of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages as the desired goal of foreign language majors at U.S. colleges and universities (MLA, 2007). How can such a competence be conceptualized? This chapter uses as a point of departure an international research project on multilingualism/multiculturalism in which native speakers of French and native speakers of English grappled with each other’s categorizations of events and their underlying ideologies for an ultimate publication in French. The challenges of cultural translation encountered in the course of this project serve as a basis to reflect on the three challenges posed by the MLA Report: (1) the need to “operate between languages,” (2) mediation and translation, and (3) the relationship of language and culture in discourse. After proposing a definition of translingual/transcultural competence, the chapter draws on various theories in applied linguistics and critical cultural studies to stake out an ecological theory of translingual/transcultural competence that includes language and cultural relativity, the social construction and emergence of meaning, the dynamics of intertextuality, and the fundamentally symbolic nature of transcultural competence. The chapter ends with a concrete example of classroom discourse in an upper-intermediate German course and examines to what extent each of the ecological tenets mentioned above were or could have been activated.
What is language pedagogy for?
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) Phipps, Alison; Levine, Glenn S.
In this chapter, the authors take a critical look at two main issues: the relationship of theory to language pedagogy and the place of language pedagogy relative to “the state of the world.” This examination is used to set the tone and introduce the chapters of this volume, showing how language pedagogy, far from being “atheoretical,” is in fact deeply infused with theory; it is always theory-driven practice. The contributions of the volume bring the paradigms of language teaching and learning—and the paradigm shifts that have been under way for some time—into focus, linking them concretely with pedagogical practice. It argues that “theory” is not a reified object but rather is embodied in our teaching and learning practices, often in ways that are unassumed and even unrecognized. A step back to think and reflect on our practice and to consider patterns that are emergent in language pedagogy gives us an exciting glimpse of change and new directions, of new embodiments of thinking about teaching in practice. The authors suggest that language pedagogy needs emergent and critical conceptual tools to move beyond a heavily skills-based approach and take an active part in addressing the dire needs of a changed world, a globalized community in which conflicts are or should be worked out by people at every level of society. Deep knowledge of languages—or translingual and transcultural competence as formulated by the Modern Language Association (MLA) Ad Hoc Committee Report (MLA, 2007)—is a crucial component of this change. To this end, picking up where the ACTFL Standards (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 2006) left off, the authors frame the contributions to the volume in terms of five “new Cs”: context, complexity, capacity, compassion, and conflict: We can never be “after theory” in the sense that there can be no reflective life without it. We can simply run out of particular styles of thinking as our situation changes. (Eagleton, 2003, p. 221)
Contents, acknowledgements, contributors
(Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010-01-01) AAUSC staff

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