This paper describes one approach to focusing on Connections, one of the five Cs from the World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, as a means of exposing introductory language students to culturally diverse authentic texts through drama-based pedagogy. Our approach focuses on an instructor working within an established departmental curriculum for introductory language courses. Despite these constraints, the instructor was able to create a two-day instructional sequence that allowed students to interact with each other through their engagement with the work of the Francophone playwright Charles Moravia (1875-1938). The activity sequence was embedded in the grammar and vocabulary presented in the assigned textbook chapter, aligned with the communicative goals for the unit, and also integrated the graduate student instructor’s own doctoral research interests in a way that was energizing for instructor and students alike. The authors demonstrate the viability of expanding a given syllabus to offer novice language students a more culturally diverse range of authentic texts, including a range of genres, all while consistently serving the needs of a proficiency-based classroom.
In 2013, the North Carolina state Task Force on Global Education put forth a goal of preparing students to be globally prepared for the twenty-first century. This study explored, through interviews with officials from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) as well as NCDPI’s website, the influence of that global initiative on dual language (DL) programs and the Seal of Biliteracy (SoBL) in the state through the lens of culturally and linguistically diverse learners’ (CLD) involvement. For other states seeking ways in which to increase DL programming and the number of students earning the SoBL while simultaneously ensuring the inclusion of CLD learners, this article illuminates ways in which NC is working towards this goal and provides concrete ideas that other states may seek to emulate.
There is no clear-cut division between orality and literacy (Street, 1993). This idea is central to literacy development in the Spanish heritage language (SHL) context because the opportunities to use heritage language (HL) skills are often oral, not written. Furthermore, the cultural situations that speakers find for their language are less extensive since they are in an environment where their HL is not the dominant language. This paper surveys the research on the writing of SHL learners (SHLLs) and proposes an integrated approach of product, process and post-process writing within a critical pedagogy that allows SHL writers to own the development of their HL literacy.
