foreign language teaching
Teaching Innovations at Vanderbilt: Daniela D’Eugenio and Selective Technology Use
Apr. 29, 2019—By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern Personal technological devices, such as phones and laptops, are ubiquitous in society as well as the classroom. Their use is banned outright by some professors and encouraged by others, but just as outside of the classroom, the exact role and extent they should be used is still being explored....
Teaching in the L2 at the Novice Level: Guidelines for Foreign Languages Teaching Assistants
Mar. 25, 2019—By José Luis de Ramón Ruiz, Teaching Affiliate Foreign Languages Departments are often keenly aware of the importance of maximizing classroom time to offer comprehensible input for their students. However, conducting an entire class in the L2 can be overwhelming for new instructors, especially for those teaching classes at the novice level. Will my students...
Leading Lines Ed Tech Podcast with Ingeborg Walther
Oct. 11, 2018—This fall, two members of the Leading Lines team, working completely independently, brought interviews with university educators about shared language programs. In each case, a group of colleges and universities got together to offer online language courses. These are courses that wouldn’t have enough enrollment to run at a single institution, but across three or...
Conversation on Teaching: Student-Produced Podcasts
Nov. 3, 2017—Podcasts have been around since the early 2000s, but the medium has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, thanks to increasing smart phone adoption and to very popular podcasts like Serial and Radiolab. Educational uses of podcasts are growing, as well. Some instructors create podcasts for use in their courses, others assign podcasts as “texts”...
Junior Faculty Spotlight: Michiru Lowe
Oct. 10, 2017—Each month, the CFT Newsletter highlights the work of our Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows. This month Michiru Lowe of Asian Studies talks about her teaching philosophy and interests. I have previously taught at Japanese schools in Japan and New Jersey from school age children to senior community members before I came to Vanderbilt. At any...
The Center for Second Language Studies to Offer Four New Working Groups
Sep. 13, 2017—All language teachers and learners are all invited to participate in any (or all) of four CSLS working groups this year. All have initial meetings in the coming weeks. Students as Filmmakers: Editing Tools in the Foreign Language Classroom First Meeting: Thursday, Sept 14th 3 pm Contact: Kate Schaller This working group...
Call for Proposals – Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives: Filling the Void
Jan. 6, 2015—Guest Post by Megan Myers, Co-President of the GSMLA If you are not a Graduate Student in the French and Italian, German, or Spanish and Portuguese Departments here at Vanderbilt, you likely have not heard of the Graduate Student Modern Language Association (GSMLA). My fellow graduate student in the French Department, Raquelle Bostow, and I...
Students as Producers: “¿Dónde está él?” (“Where is he?”)
May. 16, 2014—The CFT’s “Students as Producers” theme year culminated in our end-of-year event, the Celebration of Learning. As a part of the celebration, an exhibition of 25 student projects from all four undergraduate schools showcased a wide variety of student work. This series of blog posts highlights some of the student projects from the exhibition. Student:...
Speaking into Humanity: French Students as Producers
Nov. 4, 2013—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The CFT’s theme this year, “Students as Producers,” has given me the opportunity to talk with some talented and thoughtful colleagues across campus. On October 24, I brought together three of them to have a conversation on teaching about “Producing, Performing, & Creating Learning across the Humanities: Models of...
Social Pedagogies: Language Teaching with Google Earth and Wikis
May. 16, 2013—by Andrew Greer, 2013 Teaching Certificate Recipient and 2012-13 SoTL Scholar Many of us have memories of foreign language classes with seemingly never-ending repetitions of semi-useful phrases. I remember learning German for years, only to be surprised by my lack of fluency when I traveled to Austria. The repetition of banal phrases in my German...