Several themes emerged from the 2017 American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Convention & Expo. Held in Nashville Nov 16-19 2017, the convention’s goal is “to provide a comprehensive professional development experience that will have an impact on language educators at all levels of teaching, and in turn help their students to succeed in their language learning process.”
Out of the diverse presentations, roundtables, and exhibits, a trend toward greater authenticity in language teaching and learning seemed to emerge. Sessions throughout the convention focused on ‘real-life’ language, making learning ‘real’ through study abroad and service learning, gaining intercultural competence through collaborations with native speakers, and use of authentic materials. Social justice, an authentically important topic to many learners and instructors alike, was the topic of several sessions. Of particular note was the large number of sessions highlighting the challenge of fostering authentic, meaningful learning for heritage language learners in courses that, by definition, tend to assume a language is ‘foreign’ to all its learners. With growing understanding of their unique and inimitable linguistic resources, the need to create authentic opportunities for heritage learners is on the minds of many.
Other exciting trends emerging from ACTFL 2017:
- Creation & Adoption of Open Educational Resources
The effort to develop open (ie free!) educational resources for language learning and teaching is in large part led by COERLL at the University of Texas in Austin. COERLL’s presentations at ACTFL highlighted the Foreign Languages & the Literary in the Everyday (FLLITE) project, with its goal of developing “an educational community of practice… for generating crowdsourced literacy materials for the L2 classroom.” FLLITE is but one example of efforts across the country to improve both the quality and the accessibility of language learning and teaching materials.
- Game- and Simulation-Based learning
Exceptional presentations and workshops by CASLS and other National Foreign Language Resource Centers highlighted the engagement, motivation, digital literacy, and social justice explorations that can result from gamification in the language learning process. Taking our understanding of gamification far beyond the ‘memory and matching’ games students might access via popular language learning apps, these presentations introduced thoughtful, complex gaming experiences that engaged students in interactive and self-reflective learning activities. The NFLRC at Hawai’i-Manoa highlighted unit-long simulations for advanced learners, encouraging development of sophisticated language and professional skills through a job search scenario that engaged learners with diverse interests.
- New Tools for Learners and Instructors
Through pre-convention workshops, presentations, and product exhibits, practitioners and exhibitors shared new and emerging tools for supporting language learning in and beyond the classroom. Particularly well-represented were sessions that utilized (primarily cloud-based) tech tools in service of telecollaboration and online language learning. The most popular tools were undoubtedly the free, cloud-based technologies to support both learners and teachers, highlighted in various sessions, including the pre-convention workshop by Lara Lomicka (U. South Carolina) and Gillian Lord (U. Florida. Their exceptional list of tools to support presentational, interpretive, and interpersonal communication modes was much appreciated!
UVA was well-represented at ACTFL, with UVA presenters and participants representing the Chinese, French, Japanese, Spanish language programs!