Foreign Language Literacies: Using Target Language Texts to Improve Communication

July 18–22, 2022
1-week face-to-face summer institute

Preparing students to participate in multilingual and multicultural communities entails shifting the way we approach language instruction. How do we move beyond teaching students to order coffee or talk about weekend activities, and instead encourage them to think critically and reflectively about language, culture, and communication? To answer this question, this institute focuses on how to develop students' foreign language literacies—or the ability to interpret and create different kinds of discourse—through engagement with target language texts such as movies, infographics, poetry, music videos, magazine articles, podcasts, and the like.

Using conceptual and pedagogical understandings gained during the institute, participants will examine and assess target language texts for use in their classrooms and create text-based instructional materials that develop students' communicative abilities, critical thinking, intercultural competence, and language awareness.

After this institute, you will be able to:

• Define principles related to foreign language literacies and literacies pedagogy and discuss their importance in twenty-first century language education;
  
  
• Apply principles related to foreign language literacies and literacies pedagogy to your own teaching;
  
  
• Examine instructional materials and target language texts, and assess their appropriateness for your instructional context; and
  
  
• Create text-based instructional materials that develop students' communicative abilities, critical thinking, intercultural competence, and language awareness.

Instructors

Kate Paesani is the Director of CARLA and affiliate Associate Professor in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. A former French professor and language program director, she has delivered workshops and lectures across the United States on topics related to text-based teaching and learning, foreign language literacies development, and teacher professionalization.

Mandy Menke is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Minnesota. She is a specialist in Spanish language acquisition by both child and adult learners and has delivered professional development workshops for university instructors and immersion teachers.

Target Audience
This institute is designed for foreign language and ESL teachers at the middle school through the postsecondary level, as well as teacher educators, curriculum coordinators, and language program directors. This institute is not intended for elementary school teachers or immersion educators.

I absolutely loved this institute and found it so beneficial in both conceptual and practical ways. I am excited to include multiliteracies pedagogy to create more meaningful curriculum materials for my students!

—Christa Gould, 2021 Institute Participant