We Teach Languages

In episode 154, Kate Paesani and Yoko Hama from the Center for Advanced Research in Language Acquisition (CARLA) interview Kristi Lentz about her experiences in a CARLA workshop and learning community on the topic of centering Asian voices in the language classroom. In this interview, Kristi shares what she has learned as a Spanish teacher by intentionally focusing on connecting her students to th...

In episode 153, Stacey interviews Omar Rachid who currently teaches middle school French at a high school in Washington state. For the previous seven years, he has lived and worked in Singapore where he taught at an American school. In this interview, he shares his experiences in a program where French and Spanish are the less commonly taught languages and students move up to the next level of ins...

In episode 152, Stacey interviews Dr. Doran Katz from the Middlebury School of Hebrew. Dr. Katz, or Dodie, talks about the work she does in teacher preparation, some of the myths that many people have about second language acquisition, and how metacognitive strategies can help our language students learn. For links and show notes, visit https://wp.me/s88mlO-152 We welcome feedback, resources, and...

In episode 151, Stacey interviews Dr. Julio Torres about TBLT (Task Based Language Teaching), a methodology that centers communicative tasks as the organizing feature of instruction. Julio discusses how TBLT might work in any language classroom but especially with heritage language learners. If you are curious about what TBLT looks like in the classroom or how to better support your heritage learn...

In episode 150, Stacey and Maris share one interview from their live podcast recording this past summer with the Virtual Summit hosted by PEARLL. In this episode, we learn from Vicky Masson, an experienced teacher and leader who talks about some of her most meaningful experiences in summer institutes, fellowships, and micro-credentials. All of this professional learning has led to some pretty impr...

In episode 149, Stacey and Maris share one interview from their live podcast recording this past summer with the Virtual Summit hosted by PEARLL. In this episode, we learn from Trudy Anderson, middle school Spanish teacher and current NECTFL Teacher of the Year, who talks about how she fosters community engagement and experiences in her school and community. Trudy also talks about how team work ma...

In ep 146, Stacey sits down with Maris Hawkins and Florencia Henshaw to dig into the role of the teacher in the language classroom and the facilitator in professional development. What is the teacher or leader supposed to do? How does the facilitator ensure learning happens? What is our job? Dig into these topics with Maris, Florencia, and Stacey, and then be part of the conversation by connecting...

In ep 147, Greta Lundgaard moderates a panel discussion with experienced language teachers Henny Chen, Catherine Ousselin, Carmen Scoggins, and Thomas Soth as part of the monthly virtual teacher panel from the NFLC (National Foreign Language Center). Each month, this series gathers a different group of experienced teachers via video conference to discuss a domain of the TELL (Teaching Effectivenes...

In ep 146, Thomas Sauer leads a panel discussion with four language educators,  Marta Silva, Georges Chahwan, Natalie Stamper, and Elizabeth Matchett, as part of the monthly virtual teacher panel from the NFLC (National Foreign Language Center). Each month, this series gathers a different group of experienced teachers via video conference to discuss a domain of the TELL (Teaching Effectiveness for...

In ep 145, Dr. Stephanie Madison interviews Dr. Nelson Flores, Associate Professor of Educational Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Nelson in particular looks at the intersections of language and race in a bilingual education context. In this interview, Nelson describes the harm that racialized students experience as a result of policies and common practices in bilingual education and...

In ep 144, Stacey interviews Dr. Priscilla Layne about her teaching and research, both of which include the language and literature of immigrant and Black German communities. Priscilla describes how her background influences the way she interacts with and teaches texts and how that might be applicable in language classrooms. She also talks about Black German Afrofuturism and how this genre helps u...

In ep 143, Stacey invites Regina O'Neal, a secondary Spanish teacher and department head, to share her award winning presentation from MFLA, NECTFL, and ACTFL. Regina discusses concrete ways she highlights Black culture and communities in her Spanish classroom by connecting with other content areas and community resources, by discussing aesthetic beauty, and by guiding students to appreciate Black...

In ep 142, Dorie Conlon Perugini interviews Dr. Jonathan Rosa about his work exploring race, language, and education. Jonathan discusses what sorts of language practices are deemed legitimate in educational contexts, and how language teachers participate in institutions that are not serving multilingual students. In this episode, listeners will find new ways of thinking about language education an...

In ep 141, Stacey interviews Dr. Vijay Ramjattan, a scholar of accent, race, and work. Vijay talks about how racialized international teaching assistants communicate in their second language and the listener's role in comprehensibility. Implications for teaching pronunciation in any language are also discussed. Language teachers who want to take a critical approach to pronunciation instruction wil...

In ep 140, Stacey interviews Angélica Amezcua, a PhD candidate at Arizona State University and the author of a recent paper on how classroom instruction affects heritage language learners' motivation to maintain their language. Angélica discusses why some language communities in the US have low ethnolinguistic vitality and how state policies create conditions that prevent bilingual students from m...

In ep 139, Stacey interviews Matthew Griffin, an applied linguist and instructor of Spanish who recently published a paper analyzing textbooks for how they present "voseo" to novice learners. "Vos" is a pronoun used widely in Latin America, and not used in European varieties of Spanish. Matthew goes on to talk about the concept of linguistic variation, as well as how and why we should point out an...

In ep 138, Stacey interviews Dr. Stephanie Madison, author of the recently published article entitled "Integrated Performance Assessments: A Review of the Literature and Steps to Move Forward". If you have ever wanted to dig deeper into why IPAs work and how to make them even more practical in your language classroom, this interview and the accompanying open-access article provide a wealth of prac...

In ep 137, Stacey shares an interview with Dr. Elizabeth Miller, whom she met in February at Duke University's inaugural language symposium event. After hearing her talk about her research on emotional labor among language teachers, Stacey sat down with Liz to discuss emotional labor, emotional management, and what language teachers need to know about emotions at work.  For links and show notes, v...

In this rerun of episode 9 of We Teach Languages, Stacey talks with Claire Knowles about teaching college Spanish in a fully online, asynchronous format. Claire tells us about how she uses performance assessments instead of tests to assess learning and how she elicits feedback and reflection from students in every unit. For links and show notes, visit https://weteachlang.com/2020/03/20/we-teach-la...

Language teachers everywhere are trying to figure out how to maintain instruction online when meeting face-to-face with our students is no longer possible. This seems like a good time to rerun a few of our favorite tech-focused episodes from the last three years. We hope this episode will spark some great ideas for you about how you can effectively and efficiently teach with technology. Stacey als...

In ep 136, Dorie Conlon Perugini interviews Dr. Uju Anya on a range of topics related to the experiences of African-American language learners both in classrooms and in study abroad contexts. The two scholars discuss Uju's award-winning book, bias and inclusion in the language classroom, and why the concept of investment is more useful than motivation for analyzing student engagement.  For links a...

In ep 135, Stacey continues her interview with Robert Elliott, a conversation they started on episode 73 of the Leading Lines podcast. In this episode, Robert describes the work of the Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI), how teachers of any language can support indigenous language revitalization, and how Native American language teachers can take advantage of the summer offerings at NILI. ...

In ep 134, Stacey interviews Professor Jesse Scheumann about how he teaches Biblical Hebrew. Despite preconceptions about what it is like to learn a Biblical language, Jesse's classroom has no desks or grammar textbook and also involves movement, stories, and other techniques from communicative language teaching approaches. By the end of their first year of Hebrew, Jesse's students are reading the...

In ep 133, Stacey presents several approaches to organizing our instruction in order to help give shape to our lesson, enable more efficient decision-making by the instructor, and ensure that students get everything they need out of a lesson. Stacey first references lesson organization by Lance Piantaggini, Meredith White, and Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell, then goes on to explore in depth the experient...

In ep 132, Stacey interviews Arabic teacher and researcher Dr. Emma Trentman about language ideologies and how they play out in the classroom. Emma discusses how teachers might move away from practices that reinforce monolingual ideologies and towards multilingual ideologies such as translanguaging.  For links and show notes, visit https://wp.me/p88mlO-5YK We welcome feedback, resources, and diver...