In an increasingly interconnected world that relies on social awareness and tolerance, developing students' cultural competence is now more vital than ever. Despite its importance, language educators may find the teaching of culture particularly challenging as it may seem to lack curricular structure and be difficult to evaluate. For these…

With postcards, addressing culture in the L2 classroom follows an "if-these-walls-could-talk" design by telling the story of what "those walls" might say. A postcards approach is shown to enrich our students' cultural understanding. In many cases, it enhances their desire to experience the target culture on their own. Postcards…

While translation was once a key component of language teaching, throughout the twentieth century, it largely gave way to methods and approaches with a greater focus on communicative competence. However, efforts have been made in the past few decades to return translation and more generally multilingual language learning to classrooms. In the…

In scholarship on language pedagogy, there is growing momentum for teaching Afrodescendant literature in language classrooms. Various teachers and scholars of languages and literatures have responded to the need for greater racial inclusion in language curricula by exploring approaches to teaching Afro-Hispanic literary texts (Villegas Rogers…

This essay posits that an institution's program design mandates the curriculum for the classes we teach and that curriculum affects the concept of "canonical" literature, teacher preparation, textbook content, and comfort with discussing difference in the second language classroom for undergraduates. For that reason, this essay argues…

The pandemic and social upheaval of 2020 and 2021 have given language instructors the mission--and obligation--of adapting their curriculum to multiple crises. Although these crises have abated somewhat with classes returning to campus, we will always face fluctuations in terms of the events affecting our language regions and communities. How can…

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought questions of empathy in the modern world to the forefront of daily life. Although a natural human response, empathy can be cultivated and even taught. Recent research on the links between reading and empathy present possibilities for world language educators to integrate the purposeful study of literature with the…

The most effective way to address the critical social and political issues confronting students today is to promote intercultural competence with empathy at the core of language instruction. Language has the ability to shape our thoughts and to alter our consciousness. As students view the world through the prism of cultural openness, they are…

The Digital Humanities (DH) has been for many years, even decades, in constant development and self-definition and has been able to gather a diverse and international community that goes beyond the traditional framework of academia. Modern Languages (ML) also finds itself in the process of establishing the terms in which it intersects with the…

While culture has become an increasingly central component of foreign language learning (Garrett-Rucks 2016), the ongoing debate regarding how to implement in-depth cultural instruction inside the foreign language classroom continues, especially at the introductory level (del Valle 2014; Mitchell 2016). Adopting a qualitative approach, the present…

In 2019, Spain became the country with the third highest number of asylum applications in the EU and it continues to be one of the top destinations for international migration (Migration Policy Institute 2022). This is a particularly pressing issue in the southernmost regions of Spain, namely the Canary Islands, Ceuta, Melilla and Andalusia, which…

The purpose of this study is to explore the connection between two goal theories and to investigate how goals and the goal setting process can have an effect on academic achievement and linguistic and intercultural competence development in the Spanish second language (L2) classroom. Specifically, this study employs achievement goal theory and…

In response to the rising need for Spanish-English interpreters in the United States, there has been an increase in translation and interpreting and Spanish for the health professions courses in Spanish language programs (Martínez 2015). However, before Spanish students are exposed to a clinic or hospital context, they may have limited experience…

As a World Language teacher, I often focus my efforts on students' language development. However, I have struggled to help students find relevance and meaning in the cultures of people from distant countries and communities. My Spanish classes were full of teenagers with different backgrounds in terms of ethnicity, language, gender, sexuality, and…

Service-learning (SL), as a pedagogy that promotes reciprocal partnership building between campus and community through meaningful service and critical reflection, can provide language students with not only valuable language and cultural immersion experience, but also civic learning opportunities. Although SL research has revealed numerous…