My philosophy
Students are most engaged and participative when they connect what they are learning to their own experiences and opinions. Personalization of learning can be achieved at any level of study, though through different processes. Making personal connections to new knowledge also highlights its relevance outside the classroom, stimulating intrinsic motivation to extend learning independently.
Spanish language
I teach beginning and intermediate Spanish language, both face-to-face and online. My goal at the early stages of language acquisition is to provide students with large amounts of comprehensible input, to develop listening comprehension skills while encouraging situationally and developmentally appropriate output. In my classroom, aural input is reinforced by recruiting multiple modalities, e.g. images as well as sign language and other gestures. The content is further recycled through reading material from a variety of sources and for a variety of purposes, including language adapted for learners, to increase exposure and maximize comprehension, and selected authentic materials, to give students experience in negotiating meaning. At this level, I encourage students to personalize their learning by focusing on the vocabulary that is relevant to their lives. Student interviews and collaborative narratives craft a sense of community in the classroom as well as allow the interests of the students to guide the conversation. I also teach advanced oral proficiency laboratories, for both second language (L2) learners and heritage Spanish speakers. When L2 students have enough familiarity with the language to be able to understand classroom texts, my goal is to push them to think outside the textbook. Students keep logs of the self-selected ways in which they interact with the target language, both in its written and aural forms. Examples include reading wikipedia or news articles in the area of their (non-Spanish) major, watching TEDx talks or telenovelas, listening to the radio or to podcasts, signing up for a pen pal service or volunteering with a local Spanish-speaking community. Students use these sources to develop personally relevant vocabulary, which can then be shared in the classroom, allowing students to learn from each other and not just from me. For classes directed specifically at heritage Spanish speakers, the goal switches from developing intuitive fluency to being mindful bilinguals. Lessons emphasize being conscious of register, code-switching, and development of regionally neutral vocabulary and syntax, not with a goal of erasing current language habits but of adding habits useful in a variety of more formal contexts, be they academic or professional. |
Linguistics and Bilingualism
In the area more closely aligned with my research, I teach courses on bilingualism. Students learn about a range of subjects related to bilingualism and language acquisition, including cognition, heritage and L2 language development, sociocultural perspectives on bilingualism, and bilingual education. Course materials include a variety of sources, textbook material in Spanish as well as academic articles in English, though the language of discussion is entirely in Spanish. Throughout, students are responsible for driving the bulk of the classroom conversation, while I prod them to clarify and elaborate their positions (and sometimes play devil's advocate). I walk students through the development of individual pilot research studies in an area of personal interest. In class, we have frequent workshops covering every stage of the project planning, from crafting a research question to writing a report conforming to APA standards. Students present their results to their peers in research roundtables. I also teach contrastive grammatical analysis, a look at Spanish morphosyntax, drawing parallels and comparisons to English. Students select grammar topics, based on personal interest or challenge, and write in-depth reports going beyond what's explained in the text, incorporating academic research or pilot data, and including a discussion of how the feature impacts second language learning. Spanish for Specific Purposes
I developed (in consultation with a LSW) a two-part series of online Spanish for Social Work courses for Rutgers University. Students use authentic resources (government and non-profit websites, news articles/videos, blogs) to learn content, vocabulary, and cultural information; practice communicative techniques from basic Q&A to complex empathic responding with native Spanish-speakers in teleconference coaching sessions; role-play social work interviews with classmates; and gain a personal perspective on the social services profession through an interview project. I also adapted Spanish for the Health Professions into a series of non-credit online mini-courses geared towards healthcare professionals who want to establish or strengthen their Spanish language skills for use in the medical field. |