Becoming social actors: Designing a global simulation for situated language and culture learning

Date

2017-01-01

Contributor

Advisor

Department

Instructor

Depositor

Speaker

Researcher

Consultant

Interviewer

Narrator

Transcriber

Annotator

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Cengage

Volume

2017

Number/Issue

Starting Page

138

Ending Page

167

Alternative Title

Abstract

Recent developments in multiliteracies scholarship and pedagogies have highlighted the situated nature of language use and the diversity of ways that meanings are expressed, calling attention to creative, agentive processes of designing meanings using linguistic and semiotic resources for particular communication purposes within discourse communities. One way in which foreign language teaching can engage students in second language/culture discourse communities and social worlds is through a Global Simulation (GS) pedagogy. A GS consists in the creation of a fictitious, socioculturally realistic lifeworld where learners take on specific roles and interact within a particular community as they work collaboratively to advance a storyline or complete a project. By adopting a character, students become social actors who engage with cultural practices as they appropriate language and other symbolic resources in order to communicate particular meanings across different discourse contexts. We present a GS curriculum developed in fourth-semester French based on the Immeuble model (Debyser, 1980) and carried out through a Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996). We describe the overarching organization of curricular content, including tasks designed for students’ interpretive and productive engagement with texts. We present one module—immigration—and students’ textual responses and reflections on this module. Finally, we discuss the experience of designing a GS curriculum and include considerations for the development of simulations.

Description

Keywords

Citation

Michelson, K., Petit, E. (2017). Becoming social actors: Designing a global simulation for situated language and culture learning. The American Association of University Supervisors, Coordinators and Directors of Foreign Languages Programs (AAUSC), 138-167. http://hdl.handle.net/102015/69769

Extent

Format

Geographic Location

Time Period

Related To

Related To (URI)

Table of Contents

Rights

Rights Holder

Local Contexts

Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.