Events
Languages and Applied Linguistics
Bryan Donaldson: "Information structure and word order in medieval Occitan"
Stevenson Fireside Lounge Humanites 1 University of California, Santa Cruz Cowell College, Santa Cruz, CA, United StatesIn this talk, I draw on elements of discourse analysis and information structure–specifically topic-marking–to address a long-standing problem in the syntax of Old Occitan, a medieval Romance language spoken in what is now the south of France. In Old Occitan, the position of object and adverbial clitic (weak, atonic) pronouns remains incompletely understood (Wanner 2010). […]
Thor Sawin and Jason Martel: "Fostering foreign language learners’ speaking through ongoing feedback"
Stevenson Fireside Lounge Humanites 1 University of California, Santa Cruz Cowell College, Santa Cruz, CA, United StatesIt is now well accepted in foreign language pedagogy that assessment is not solely an end-‐of-‐unit activity. Rather, it is important for teachers to monitor learners’ language development using a variety of techniques throughout the course of a unit of study. Among the many skills to be assessed in foreign language classrooms, speaking presents unique […]
Julio Torres: "Individual Differences in Prior Language Experience: The Heritage Language Bilingual"
Humanities 1, Room 202Individual differences play a key role in explaining variability in learning outcomes among adult second language learners. Researchers have begun examining the additional language learning experiences of learners with different profiles including bilinguals, aging learners and learners with low literacy levels in their first language. In this talk, I will present briefly data from three […]
Stephanie Lain: "Content-Based Design Using Constructivist Connectionist Principles"
Stevenson Fireside Lounge Humanites 1 University of California, Santa Cruz Cowell College, Santa Cruz, CA, United StatesIn this talk I discuss the challenges involved in designing content-based curricula for foreign language courses. I will illustrate the main concepts by focusing on the example of a first-year Spanish course developed for The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), whose Language Studies division follows an exclusively content-based model of instruction. Though […]