School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemForget what you think you know - the real story about what works in languages classrooms(Filodiritto Editore, 2023)After teaching Italian in adult and university contexts with a communicative and explicit-grammar teaching focus for nearly 25 years, I was becoming increasingly perplexed as to why my students continued to make mistakes and not learn the correct forms of basic parts of speech (e.g. definite articles). This pedagogical crisis occurred around the same time that I heard Bill VanPatten speak about the failed promises of instructed second language acquisition (SLA) [9]. In a nutshell, he claimed that much of what occurs in typical languages classrooms has next to no impact on language acquisition – this resonated strongly with me and I decided to return to SLA research to understand more [10]. What I discovered has led to a complete overhaul of my teaching approach influenced heavily by Krashen’s claims that approaches based on comprehensible input are superior to all others [2]. In this paper, I will present the compelling case for comprehensible input and describe how I have implemented this in the Italian Studies program at the University of Melbourne through the use of story-listening [7]. I will also discuss student responses to the approach and provide you with a range of suggestions on how to implement this in your own contexts.
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ItemVirtual exchange and Meaning-Making - Translanguaging and Pushing the Boundaries(Filodiritto Editore, 2023)In this paper, we describe the latest iteration of our virtual exchange project (see [1], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] for context) between students of Italian in an Australian university and students in a liceo linguistico in Italy. Students, in pairs or groups of three, met online for 4 weeks and, unlike previous virtual exchanges where we prescriptively programmed topics to be discussed, were given the instruction to define their own topics of interest to pursue together. The objective of this freer approach was to encourage students to become stronger agents of meaning-making using the languages at their disposal. As García and Kleifgen [2] note “[t]o liberate the meaning-making potential of […] bilinguals, a translanguaging pedagogy privileges emergence of meaning making, feeling, intensity, and excitement, as it moves the imaginaries of students to make connections across what are perceived and encoded as separate sign systems” (p. 568). Multilinguals can experience a transformation “when they realize the artificial and constructed nature of the categories imposed on them” ([4], p. 498), and they can then coordinate their own performances without the strictures of external categories.” ([4], p. 560). We explore the range of topics defined by student participants and compare this with both our own previous models for virtual exchange as well as others drawn from the literature. We also detail student responses to their online translanguaging experience. We examine the ramifications of this information for future similar projects but also for meaningful meaning-making for young people in languages education.