Workshop series announcement: FL Pedagogy Workshop, SUNY-Binghamton, October-November, 2002

[Scott McGinnis]

Foreign Language Pedagogy Workshop at SUNY, BinghamtonFOREIGN LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY WORKSHOP
(http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~sundy/events.htm)


Organized 
by


Sungdai Cho 
(Associate Professor, German, Russian and East Asian Languages)


Co-Sponsored 
by


Classical and Near Eastern Studies
Romance Languages and Literatures
Center for Teaching and Learning
Languages Across the Curriculum
Translation, Research and Interpretation Program 
Asian and Asian American Studies Program
Harpur College Dean


In line with the Binghamton Universityâs new foreign language requirement which will take effect in 2004, we are designing a workshop that will focus on critical reflection on 1) effective foreign language teaching and learning, 2) pedagogy, and 3) cross cultural communication.  The critical nature of the issue was driven home by September 11, which led the US Department of Education to put greater focus on the role of critical languages in strengthening the American security and economy.  The critical languages taught at BU include Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian.  For each of these, as well as for German and Spanish, we will bring a language specialist to our university who has markedly affected research on foreign language teaching and pedagogy in the US. This workshop will be co-sponsored with the departments, programs and centers listed above.  Since high school foreign language teachers will also be invited to this workshop, articulation with high schools will improve and they will also benefit from this important workshop series.  It is our intention to invite six outside lecturers, but to involve local faculty active in pedagogy in the workshop series

Detailed Schedule


The workshop will be conducted on Thursdays in October and November in Fall 2002.  Internationally-renowned language pedagogists/scholars from Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish are invited to speak.


Time: Thursday at 5:00-6:15.
Location: SL 212


 Oct. 3: Chinese, Galal Walker, Ohio State University
  On Being Apparently Intelligent in the Other Culture: Lessons from China Internships

This presentation focuses on the endgame in foreign language study. It suggests how the value of the knowledge of a foreign language and culture is determined in society and discusses how we can identify elements of that value as a pedagogical resource. The cultural relativity of intelligence is discussed along with strategies for designing culture-based instruction for equipping our students to act intelligent when communicating in the studied culture.  This presentation challenges many common assumptions in foreign language study and proposes some radical instructional solutions. 

 Oct. 10: German, Heidi Byrnes, Georgetown University
  Collegiate Language Study and Collegiate Language Departments

In my talk I will explore issues that arise in conjunction with the study of languages in higher education from three perspectives: (1) from the perspective of language learning and teaching; (2) from the perspective of the intellectual foundations and institutional configurations of departments and  programs; and (3) from the perspective of professional fidelity and accountability toward students and society at large. I will argue that all three areas invite us  to make discerning choices, a demand that presupposes the collaborative creation of encompassing frames of reference and their collaborative realization in an academic community. The challenges this entails also afford unusual opportunities. In particular, I will suggest that the foreign language field might thereby be able to accomplish two important goals, to recover its position in the academy as an ideational and moral enterprise in the tradition of the humanities and to address creatively the increasing demands for accountability that higher education confronts as it faces considerable shifts in a globalized environment.

 Oct. 17: Japanese, Yasu-Hiko Tohsaku, University of California, San Diego
Roles of Critical Thinking Skills in Learning Foreign Languages and Cultures

This presentation focuses on what roles critical thinking skills play in foreign language and culture learning. I will argue that the promotion and use of critical thinking skills will enhance the efficiency of language and culture learning and learners' motivation for learning new languages and cultures. We will be able to incorporate them not only in upper-level literature courses, but even in beginning-level language courses. I will present several examples of classroom activities and materials incorporating higher level thinking skills and demonstrate how such activities and materials provide students with rich curricular experiences and new perspectives on language and culture learning.

 Oct. 31: Korean, Ho-min Sohn, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Why is Korean a "Category 4" language?:What should we do about it?

The U.S. Foreign Service Institute has classified Korean (together with Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic) as belonging to "Category 4", the most difficult group of languages for adult Americans to learn for oral communication. The primary aim of this presentation is to identify essential linguistic, sociolinguistic, and cultural features that cause the difficulty. This will be done by looking into: (a) structural complexity of Korean in terms of phonology, morphology, and syntax; (b) interlingual differences between Korean and English; and (c) cross-cultural distinctions between Koreans and Americans as reflected in respective communication patterns. The secondary aim is to briefly discuss the kinds of pedagogical measures that will help American students acquire higher levels of proficiency in Korean more effectively and expeditiously.
 
 Nov. 7: Russian, Patricia Chaput, Harvard University
Why Some Techniques Work and Others Don't:  Understanding the Mechanics of Motivating Dialogue and Discussion

We are all familiar with the pressures to develop high levels of proficiency in the limited hours of our language courses.  In most of our courses a high priority is placed on getting students to talk, both in practice dialogues and in discussion.  As they progress, we expect our students to use speaking practice in order to learn to speak more, to develop more sophisticated forms of expression, to express their own thoughts, eventually to engage in genuine discussion.  But how do we go about this task?  In the beginning, through dialogues in everyday situations, in restaurants, cafes, in conversations about family and friends, in dialogues that do not stray far from "the self" and imagined experiences in a foreign culture.  In this workshop we will question the efficacy and efficiency of this kind of oral practice by analyzing the structure and objectives of some traditional forms of oral activities in order to try to determine what we can expect students to acquire from them.
 We will also consider alternatives to these standard kinds of activities, exploring ways to structure oral practice to address the development of discourse competence and the ability to "encode personal meaning" that is required by the inherent unpredictability of most natural dialogue.  While the sample dialogues of standard textbooks prepare students for the social rituals and formulas of specific situations, by focusing on formulaic situations and social talk they do not prepare students for the more complex task of encoding personal meaning that is required for genuine dialogue on a meaningful topic.  Learning to function in unpredictable speech situations requires different kinds of activities that give students practice in interpreting messages, responding spontaneously, relating present situations and past actions that have led to them, making future predictions, and using the discourse conventions that allow speakers to play appropriate roles in the give and take of natural dialogue.  Such activities are normally part of advanced language study but they have not been prominent at the introductory level.  Yet it is desirable, perhaps even essential, that preparation for unpredictability and interpretation be an integrated part of language study from the very beginning, something that develops together with students' developing language knowledge and competence.  This workshop will explore approaches to developing these capabilities at the introductory level, and how they might be further expanded and extended in more advanced study.

 Nov. 14: Spanish, Donna Long, Ohio State University
  Pedagogy and Service Learning in a Second Language Context

It is said that service learning promotes development of cognitive complexity, citizenship skills, and social responsibility, through engagement in learning activities that respond to community issues. Service learning within a second language learning/teaching context provides unique opportunities for pedagogical exploration. This talk will focus on pedagogical approaches from within the field of second language learning/teaching, as well as those ìborrowedî from other disciplines. Such approaches are not only useful in service-learning contexts, but also have implications for other types of language and culture courses at many levels.
 
 
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