It is established that the pedagogy of heritage language teaching should be rooted in community building and appreciation for cultural and linguistic variety. Shared experiences and community building are known to increase student engagement and give opportunity for active learning. In Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL), students explore an issue for an extended period and create a product which is connected to their own concerns, interests, and identity.

Using real-world texts in the language classroom is not new. We find authentic texts in language textbooks most frequently in the form of advertisements, business cards, screenshots of websites, segments of newspaper articles, or literature. Yet, these real-world texts do not end up under the spotlight they deserve! To illustrate the practical application of utilizing real-world texts in language instruction, let's delve into a specific set of activities from the online platform Italian in Wonderland, a collaborative effort between Letizia Maria Bellocchio, Beppe Cavatorta, and myself.

Wikipedia Expands the Small LCTL Classroom Guest Author: Lisa Gulesserian, PhD, Preceptor in Armenian at Harvard University and winner of the 2024 MAFLT LCTL Innovation Awards In my daily life…

Students are engaged and willing to learn if a class is interesting to them. Thus, unique, creative educational experiences create opportunities for diverse forms of engagement in and outside the classroom.

Mandarin Chinese is not easy, but I think that most people will agree with me that the most difficult part of learning Mandarin is learning Chinese characters. To a second language learner, learning characters is laborious work. However, Chinese characters are not just a form of communication but a form of art.

As I write this in late-summer 2021, most of us are or will soon be inside a classroom again, looking our students in the eyes, and seizing all of the benefits that F2F teaching can offer (no more "you're muted"). Nonetheless, I would be lying if I said that while teaching remotely I didn't come across great online resources and tools that proved to be extremely helpful.

Today, we are starting a new series with the goal of sharing our favorite hacks with some of the tools that seem to be most popular with language instructors. In this installment, we’re going to look at Microsoft's popular, free ed tech tool Flipgrid, which allows teachers to create "grids" to facilitate video discussions.