Call for papers - AAUSC volume on advanced language learning (possible topics include heritage learners) -- DEADLINE 1 SEPTEMBER

[Scott McGinnis]

AAUSC VOLUME 2003: Issues in Language Program Direction

Advanced Foreign Language Learning:
A Challenge to College Programs

Call for Papers

Papers are sought for the American Association of University Supervisors
and Coordinators’ 2003 volume on Issues in Language Program Direction.
Entitled Advanced Foreign Language Learning:  A Challenge to College
Programs, this collection explores the possibilities and challenges for
collegiate foreign language departments as they support advanced L2
learning. Central to the volume is the notion that fostering advanced
language learning requires program-wide thinking that spans the typical
four year undergraduate program and the possibility for continuation in
graduate education. Because of their expertise in the field and their
inherent investment in programmatic issues, supervisors and coordinators
can and should play a pivotal role in shaping this discussion.

An investigation into advanced language acquisition raises important
questions about possible limitations placed on advanced language
learning by the structural and content bifurcation in collegiate foreign
language departments and also by  prevailing characterizations of the
advanced learner. Specifically, addressing advanced language instruction
entails linking content and language learning and the consequences of
that linkage, in terms of structures, courses, materials, and
pedagogies. This volume wishes to foster an explicit focus on these and
related issues. Topics that might be addressed include:

- “The curriculum,” as contrasted with a series of courses or as two
separate and unequal portions (e.g., the language program, the content
courses) as a way of enhancing balanced interlanguage development toward
advanced abilities over the four years of study;
- quality criteria for “language teaching “ in the post-methods
condition that recognizes that foreign language learning is a staged
long-range process, that must have, at the very least, have a conceptual
trajectory toward advanced abilities if it is at all to achieve them;
- the challenge of fostering the existing capacities of heritage
speakers;
- the quality of study abroad programs, and their relationship to campus
programs;
- the increasingly frequent shift back-and-forth between instructed and
naturalistic foreign language learning, e.g., through internships,
engagement with diverse communities that use the language, the world of
work;
- a program's need to “assure” that its graduates can handle the
sophisticated language use that characterizes academic work in graduate
departments.
- a reconsideration of what is involved in “language acquisition” in
academic settings, as contrasted with proprietary and professional
settings.

For expressions of interest and questions about the volume, please
contact the editors at your earliest convenience. Submission deadline
for papers (4 copies):  September 1, 2002.  See style sheet (Modified
Chicago B) in recent issues of the AAUSC series.

Heidi Byrnes and Hiram Maxim
German Department
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C. 20057
Tel:  (202) 687-6051; Fax:  (202) 687-7568
E-mail:  byrnesh at georgetown.edu or hhm2 at georgetown.edu


--
Hiram H. Maxim, II
Assistant Professor
Department of German
Georgetown University
Washington, DC 20057
(202) 687-5723
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/hhm2