| Check out the following presentations by CARLA staff and colleagues at these upcoming conferences!
 10th Annual Second Language Acquisition Graduate Student Symposium
Second Language Teaching and Learning: Diversity and Advocacy
April 22-22, 2017
Coffman Memorial Union
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN
This conference is organized by the University of Minnesota Second Language Education Student Association in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa. The conference seeks to give student researchers and educators the opportunity to present new and future studies that address current issues in SLA.
Offered annually at one of the three campuses, the conference draws a wide spectrum of students interested in language teaching and learning, research, education, and their attendant social, psychological, and linguistic implications. All students are welcome to present their work and meet distinguished researchers in their field at this free, student-run symposium.
Plenary: Rethinking Peer Interaction: Insights on Language Learning Among Refugee-Background Students
Saturday, April 22, 2017
9:10-10:10 am
Second language acquisition research on peer interaction has been dominated by cognitive-interactionist paradigms, with participants who are print-literate language learners, who are carefully matched, and who engage in researcher designed tasks. This research program has been productive for cognitively oriented researchers but also has given socioculturalists a forum for exploring the interactive and sociocultural components of peer learning. Less explored, and deserving more attention is naturally occurring participant structures with new populations of learners in everyday classrooms. Addressing this gap, this presentation explores how participant structures of peer interaction looks among newcomer refugee-background adolescents with limited formal schooling. Contexts of paired and choral reading, textbook-based tasks, and multilingual interactions in social media will be examined through mainstream SLA and alternative paradigms to understand the roles of such classroom interactions for language learning. We will discuss where and how to move the field’s theoretical and practical understanding of peer interaction into new, exciting and unexplored arenas.
Presenters: Martha Bigelow and Kendall King, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Minnesota
Plenary: The Diverse Paths of Foreign Language Teacher Development
Saturday April 22, 2017
1:30-2:30 pm
Much like acquisition of a second language, building expertise in foreign language teaching is a long-term, complex process. Previous research reveals that teachers’ conceptual understanding progresses along a slow, twisting path (e.g., Allen & Dupuy, 2013; Smagorinsky, Cook, & Johnson, 2003), that teachers struggle to apply these understandings to classroom practice (e.g., Paesani, 2013; Rankin & Becker, 2006), and that a range of professional development experiences are needed to facilitate teachers’ understanding and application of concepts related to teaching (e.g., Allen & Negueruela-Azarola, 2009; Brandl, 2000). Moreover, the varied beliefs, experiences, and identities of individual teachers influence how they teach and reflect on their teaching practices (e.g., Angus, 2016; Burton, 2009). In this presentation, I explore these diverse paths of foreign language teacher development, drawing from results of my empirical investigation into teachers’ classroom practices, their professional development experiences, and their reflections on foreign language teaching and learning. I further consider how an understanding of the diverse paths of teacher development informs the work of teacher-educators and supports teacher growth
Presenter: Kate Paesani, Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, University of Minnesota
“Congratulatory Remarks” and Ideological Disjuncture at One Tribal School’s Kindergarten Graduation
Friday, April 22, 2017
In Grouped Paper Session #1: 3:15-4:45 am
This paper examines how school stakeholders discursively enact and reimagine the contentious ‘two-worlds’ philosophy within a single event: one Ojibwe kindergarten graduation ceremony. Through critical discourse analysis, I explore the stances enacted through a variety of ideological disjunctures at play in an Indigenous language reclamation program.
Presenter: Mel Engman, University of Minnesota
Något Som Var Väldigt “Scandalous”: Concordia Language Villages’ Effect on Second Language Learning
Friday, April 22, 2017
In Grouped Paper Session #1: 3:15-4:45 am
This study examines the effect exposure to Concordia Language Villages, a second language learning context not often studied, may have had on the learner language of two advanced speakers of Swedish.
Presenter: Liz Stopka, University of Minnesota
L2 Spanish Motion and Narration: A Learner Language Perspective
Friday, April 22, 2017
In Grouped Paper Session #1: 3:15-4:45 am
This paper proposes to analyze L1 English-L2 Spanish speakers’ use of motion verbs through a learner language perspective. The L2 language produced by these speakers during video narrations is compared to their overall L2 proficiency as measured through an abbreviated Oral Proficiency Interview.
Presenter: Tripp Strawbridge, University of Minnesota
Sustaining Common Ground and Co-Constructing Meaning in Peer-Peer Novice Learner Interaction
Saturday, April 22, 2017
In Grouped Paper Session #2: 10:15-11:45 am
This self-study on novice peer-peer interaction takes a sociocognitive perspective to analyzing the embodied and social tools that two learners employ in sustaining common ground during video recorded role-play conversations in Mixtec, an Indigenous language. Findings stress the need to move beyond conceptions of negotiation of meaning as repair.
Presenter: Maria Schwedhelm, University of Minnesota
Translanguaging as a Mechanism for Sense-Making in Discourse
Saturday, April 22, 2017
In Grouped Paper Session #2: 10:15-11:45 am
This study examines translanguaging practices in spontaneous speech data of a proficient speaker of Spanish as a second language and its communicative functions.
Presenter: Celia Bravo Diaz, University of Minnesota
Investigating Lexical Development of Adult ESL Learners with Nouns and Verbs
Saturday, April 22, 2017
In Grouped Paper Session #2: 10:15-11:45 am
English is a noun-biased language and young children learn nouns more readily than verbs (Gentner, 1982; Goldfield, 2000). This quantitative study examines “Noun Bias” in second language acquisition among adult English language learners. Implications for teaching English as a second language and proficiency assessment will be discussed.
Presenter: Zhongkui Ju, University of Minnesota
“An Appointment with Democracy”: A CAF Analysis on an English Learner’s Audio Journals
Saturday, April 22, 2017
In Grouped Paper Session #3: 3:00-4:30 am
This case study examines the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of an adult English learner’s language in audio journals used in an Intensive English class to explore the role of topic familiarity in a student’s performance. Results show an increase in CAF and suggest this relationship is quite complex.
Presenter: Shawna Wicker, University of Minnesota
 International Association for Language Learning Technology (IALLT) Conference
Go Far with Technology
June 20-23, 2017
Concordia College
Moorhead, Minnesota
Pre-Conference Workshop: Student Language Proficiency Self-Assessment: The BOSSA Protocol
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
8:00-11:00 am
Self-assessment is a tool that can increase learners’ active engagement and agency. In this workshop, participants will be introduced to self-assessment practices, drawing upon examples from the self-assessment protocol at the University of Minnesota. Next, we discuss strategies for the incorporation of self-assessment that align with students’ and programs’ needs. Specifically, we discuss issues with instruments such as content, scoring, and calibration. Participants will evaluate the feasibility of using self-assessments at their institutions.
Presenters: Gabriela Sweet, Anna Olivero-Agney, Adolfo Carrillo Cabello, and Dan Soneson (University of Minnesota)
Pre-Conference Workshop: Transitioning to Teaching Language Online: Strategies and Tools
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
3:00-5:00 pm
Teaching online needs different tools and strategies to help our language students learn in the best ways possible! We will give you examples of 3 face-to-face unit plans targeting the three modes of communication. You will discuss how it might be possible to teach these lessons online and what online tools would be helpful to do this. We will also consider the STARTALK principles, and how they can be applied to teaching online in the context of these lessons. You will leave with “transitioned” lesson plan ideas and suggestions of online tools for each of the three modes.
Presenters: Marlene Johnshoy and Frances Matos-Schultz (University of Minnesota), Shannon Spasova (Michigan State University)
Please check out the IALLT Conference website next week for additional details and updates, including sessions by CARLA staff and U of MN instructors.
|
Summer Institutes for Immersion Teachers
STARTALK:
Interested in learning how to teach online, but don’t teach a critical language?
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 