Abstract
In recent years, U.S. colleges have sought to increase campus diversity by offering more financial aid packages to underrepresented applicants, while offsetting costs by recruiting more full-tuition students from overseas. As a result, the classroom has become a globalized learning space, in which the students’ and teacher’s sole shared experience may be the classroom itself. The change in the foreign-language classroom has been visible and dramatic: the students are no longer a homogenous group of white, upper/middle class teenagers learning a second language; the teacher is no longer a quasi-anthropologist sharing knowledge of faraway places; and cultural lessons can no longer be relegated to vacation photos, in-class movies, or textbook sidebars … and this is at once a disorienting and thrilling prospect for language teachers. In this paper, I will draw from recent enrollment data, emerging pedagogical approaches, and two decades of classroom experience to identify ways foreign-language teachers can leverage technology and draw from their students’ backgrounds to create relevant content, invite honest discussion, and foster a sense of class community in the target language. I will illustrate my points with anecdotal evidence from my own classrooms, which have included students from farming villages, inner-city neighborhoods, wealthy suburbs, and small towns from New York to Shenyang. I will then conclude with a sample activity for present and virtual attendees using Google Slides!
Presenters
Kristin NeumayerFaculty Associate and Course Coordinator, Spanish and Portuguese, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2022 Special Focus: Intercultural Learning in Plurilingual Contexts
KEYWORDS
Culture, Diversity, Higher Education, Inclusion, Language Teaching, Multicultural Learning, Technology
