Ahead of the recent wave of social justice movements (e.g., [All] Black Lives Matter (#BLM), #MeToo, #StopJewishHate, #StopAsianHate), in 2019 the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) declared a stance on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in language education. It affirmed that it "values diversity…

Spanish and French majors at our small, private, Southern U.S. liberal arts institution must study abroad for an entire semester, yet students embark and return with widely disparate levels of language and intercultural learning. To more fully foster learning-laden semester-long study abroad experiences we changed the curriculum and now majors…

The all-encompassing term "Medical Spanish" references the Spanish used by healthcare professionals. Medical Spanish courses have gained traction as the Spanish-speaking population in the U.S. continues to grow. Consequently, demand for courses in Medical Spanish and other areas of Spanish for Specific Purposes (SSP), a subfield of…

Coloniality in education and language policies continues to impact Indigenous communities in implicit and complex ways. In this article, we describe the case of Colombia where, like in many other countries in the Global South, educational policy messages are contradictory. While ethno-education policies purport to sustain Indigenous languages and…

The scope of this article is twofold: to revisit the foundational importance of Business Spanish to the United States and to track its early formalization in American secondary and higher education. It will focus on the years surrounding American Independence in 1776, followed by the key role played by the American Association of Teachers of…

The mixed-methods pilot study described in this article traces the development of a Spanish for Specific Purposes: Health Professions course that was designed to help future health care professionals develop their linguistic proficiency and intercultural abilities. The study included nursing, medical, and dental students and was conducted at a…

At the intersection of social studies and world language curricula are opportunities to explore students' prior learning with vocabulary-rich content designed to support language acquisition goals. "Funds of knowledge" is defined as socio-cultural, economic, and historical knowledge from home and community settings. The instructional…

Needs analysis (NA) has been a core component of language for specific purposes (LSP) research and curriculum development for the past half-century, and within the past decade has seen significant methodological advancement. Specifically, certain LSP NA research has adopted task as a unit of analysis (e.g., Youn, 2018; Malicka et al., 2019), and…

When teaching multilingual learners, it is critical for teachers to use instructional strategies that engage and nurture language and biliteracy skills. In this practice-based paper, we address how teachers can utilize translanguaging strategies to recognize and build multilingual practices while offering all learners opportunities to share their…

World language classrooms in the United States have been significantly impacted by the physical and ideological disruptions experienced in recent history. Such disruptive times call for the reform of pedagogical practices to raise awareness of social justice issues and ignite real change both in and out of language classrooms. This essay outlines…

This article investigates translanguaging as pedagogy in an English/Spanish dual language middle school science classroom as teacher and students engage in scientific argumentation about issues of biodiversity. Drawing from literature on bilingual education, bilingualism, linguistically responsive teaching, and scientific argumentation, we…

Recent scholarship in professional development (PD) has advocated for solid conceptual frameworks and understanding of the complex process involved in how language educators may continue to develop and fulfil the current challenging teaching demands. However, specific relationships underlying departmental cultures and how language educators relate…

This article describes a pedagogical initiative that identifies opportunities for increased efficiency and functionality in the teaching and learning of Spanish in the context of the United States. At the core of this initiative is the reformulation of curricular and programmatic approaches in terms of current social, cultural, and linguistic…

At a time when language programs around the United States are in crisis--the University of Rhode Island's Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures is realigning its curriculum to emphasize proficiency and intercultural competence within a strong liberal arts context. The result of the department's recent initiatives? More than…

In the high-stakes accountability English educational system, decisions made by government and agencies about curriculum, pedagogy and assessment drive school planning and actions. This paper analyses the drivers for the recent change to French German and Spanish GCSEs and highlights particular areas of the new specification which may damage the…