Expanded and revised to include four entirely new chapters, this thoroughly updated edition presents a model for how educators can design high-quality, challenging, and supportive learning opportunities for multilingual learners. Starting with the premise that conceptual, analytic, and language practices develop simultaneously as students engage…

In this descriptive study the efforts of a faculty to prepare a cohort of pre-service bilingual education teachers to pass a newly adopted state certification test of academic Spanish are presented. The faculty's efforts were aimed at offsetting a low pass rate on this test, but unfortunately efforts fell short. To unpack this outcome, the authors…

Bilingual teacher education scholars continue to advocate for the improvement of Spanish language-related teacher preparation practices. However, the field is in need of research on how bilingual teacher educators across the U.S. are addressing this task in their work with future teachers. In responding to this call, I describe an approach and an…

In this article, the author shares two ideas that have guided her as she has attempted to ground curricular design in a web of diverse elements, on one hand, and also communicate more explicitly to students how and why an undergraduate Spanish major encompasses more than just development of oral proficiency in face-to-face interactions in order to…

This article reports on an extensive survey administered to advanced heritage language (HL) learners to examine their language behaviors, attitudes, and backgrounds. To date, there have been no detailed categorizations of advanced HL learners to guide classroom instruction and curriculum design. Thus the present study is a first attempt to fill…

Argues that coordinated language-learning sequences provide continuity for learners and clearer understandings about the interrelationships of curriculum, instruction, outcomes, and evaluation for teachers. The article discusses articulation in French, German, and Spanish programs; vertical models of articulation; horizontal articulation; program…

The University of Southwestern Louisiana initiated a commercial Spanish curriculum to serve the growing number of students in the business school. Two major factors were considered: (1) most business students had only taken language classes as electives and were concerned about the career relevance of those courses, and (2) language courses had to…

Argues that a gap exists in university-level foreign-language curriculum that requires a "bridge," that is, a course designed to take students from where they are to where they should be to study for a foreign-language major and describes the bridge course in Hispanic culture at the University of New Mexico. (four references) (CK)

The theoretical teaching model described in this document provides a plan whereby a child entering the Bilingual School in kindergarten and remaining in school through sixth grade will have experienced seven years of bilingual instruction and will be able to receive 50% of his instruction in English and 50% in Spanish. This objective is based on…

This curriculum guide for Indiana's foreign language education (1) establishes what proficiency is at the end of each of four instructional levels, through sets of competencies, or learning outcomes, to be achieved throughout that level; (2) defines progress throughout the sequence of levels in terms that can be readily understood; and (3)…

The Iowa guide to foreign language curriculum development, the result of a 1985 state mandate, is designed to help local teachers and administrators build on and improve current curriculum and instructional methods. An opening section outlines the rationale, philosophy, and goals of the guide, and subsequent sections focus on curriculum design and…

This book includes the following chapters: "Literacy and Advanced Foreign Language Learning: Rethinking he Curriculum" (Richard G. Kern); "A Template for Advanced Learner Tasks: Staging Genre Reading and Cultural Literacy Through the Precis" (Janet Swaffar); "Fostering Advanced L2 Literacy: A Genre-Based, Cognitive…

The 2008 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, a joint conference with the Michigan World Language Association, focused on learning about the diverse backgrounds and needs of today's students and discovering new ways to help them succeed in reaching the goal of language proficiency. A wide variety of workshops and…

A state grant to the Department of Romance Languages of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville has allowed development of a proficiency-based curriculum for first- and second-year French and Spanish. Most of the effort to date has been preparation of the syllabus based on specified goals and objectives, or student outcomes, focusing on allowing…

At the Louisiana State University Laboratory School, the 4-year course sequences in French and Spanish use American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency guidelines as a basis for planning for language skill development. In listening proficiency, the course sequence integrates teaching of listening skills with other…