Teaching language and culture in a global age: New goals for teacher education

Abstract

This chapter reviews four examples of new thinking in the teaching of foreign languages and cultures that reorient our goals from acquisition of language to understanding relational dimensions of language and language use (literacy, translingual and transcultural competence, plurilingualism and pluriculturalism, symbolic competence). Implications are derived for the preparation of graduate student instructors, which center around three areas: (1) broadening graduate students’ understanding of what language teaching is all about, (2) considering a less absolute “monolingual” approach to the teaching of foreign languages, and (3) encouraging the development of language awareness. The chapter concludes with a few practical examples of how some of the identified areas are being addressed at UC Berkeley. These examples include apprenticeship with a mentor teacher, observations by other faculty, pedagogy courses, expanding the typical range of courses taught, learning to design a special topic course, and building an intellectual community around language and culture teaching.