March 2021
March 1, 2021 | ||
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2:30pm | Remote Language Teaching Sharing Group |
This virtual forum is intended as a way for language instructors to come together and share solutions and ideas that they have implemented while teaching remotely. We encourage language instructors to participate and sign up to share on a specific date. Each person sharing will be allotted a maximum of fifteen minutes to present and answer questions from the group. This event is posted in Yale Connect through the Center for Language Study (CLS) group and the CLS Graduate Students and FLTAs. An invite email will also be sent to Faculty, Students and other guests. If you would like to attend, but an email invite was not sent, please contact Maria Ideliu. |
March 4, 2021 | ||
12:45pm | CLS Brown Bag: "The Harvard Language Exchange: Toward Community-focused Informal Language Learning" - Guest speakers: Andrew Ross and Mary DiSalvo |
The Harvard Language Exchange: Toward Community-focused Informal Language Learning
Abstract:
The Language Exchange began in the Fall of 2019 as a simple idea: to match members of the Harvard community, broadly conceived, who wanted to exchange language practice. Using a Google form and shared spreadsheet, the Harvard Language Center staff began to grow a modest list of users. When COVID forced Harvard to turn to remote instruction and then online teaching and learning, we recognized the importance of the Language Exchange as a community-building tool. With the design support and technical expertise of Harvard IT, we have recently launched a new purpose-built Language Exchange site, which currently has over 300 users.
In this presentation, we will outline the needs case for informal language learning opportunities, describe the history of the project, show the site from user and administrator perspectives, and offer some thoughts on the potential impact of this platform for community-building across a widely varying population of users.
Guest Speakers’ Bios:
Andrew Ross is the Director of the Language Center at Harvard University. He earned his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as the director of language centers at the University of Richmond, Brown University, and Arizona State University prior to arriving at Harvard in 2019. He is also the current president of the International Association for Language Learning Technology (IALLT). His current focus is on computer-mediated communication, language center design and development, and creating models of integrated support for teaching and learning.
Mary DiSalvo holds a PhD in Italian Studies from Harvard University. Her background is in Italian language and literature instruction. She is currently the Language Support Manager and IT Liaison at the Harvard Language Center, where she provides technical and pedagogical support for language instructors. In addition to continuing to improve the Harvard Language Exchange, her current focus is on starting the LC’s podcasting series.
This event is open for registration in Yale Connect through the Center for Language Study (CLS) group and the CLS Graduate Students and FLTAs. An invite email will also be sent to Faculty, Students and other guests. If you would like to attend, but an email invite was not sent, please contact Maria Ideliu.
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March 11, 2021 | ||
3:30pm | CLS Virtual Happy Hour |
Please join us for the first CLS Virtual Happy Hour of the semester! This event is open for registration in Yale Connect through the Center for Language Study (CLS) group and the CLS Graduate Students and FLTAs. An invite email will also be sent to Faculty, Students and other guests. If you would like to attend, but an email invite was not sent, please contact Maria Ideliu |
March 15, 2021 | ||
2:30pm | Remote Language Teaching Sharing Group |
This virtual forum is intended as a way for language instructors to come together and share solutions and ideas that they have implemented while teaching remotely. We encourage language instructors to participate and sign up to share on a specific date. Each person sharing will be allotted a maximum of fifteen minutes to present and answer questions from the group. This event is posted in Yale Connect through the Center for Language Study (CLS) group and the CLS Graduate Students and FLTAs. An invite email will also be sent to Faculty, Students and other guests. If you would like to attend, but an email invite was not sent, please contact Maria Ideliu. |
March 18, 2021 | ||
12:45pm | CLS Brown Bag Series: Guest speaker Steven Leveen, Ph.D on his new book "America's Bilingual Century" |
After receiving an undergraduate degree in biology and his Ph.D. in sociology, Steve Leveen became a science journalist. But he abandoned that career to become an entrepreneur, starting, with his wife, a company selling “tools for serious readers,” they named Levenger. Their company became Inc. Magazine’s 8th fastest growing private company in America and Leveen worked as CEO for 25 years. Then, in mid-life, he left the business world and returned to his first love of researching and reporting on social science, more particularly, bilingualism in America.
His new book suggests that Americans are forging a new narrative about their languages and that our country, “rather than being a monolingual mouse, is a linguistic lion.” The US, he reports, has more bilinguals than any European country, and now has the ingredients in place for an era of flourishing bilingualism. Hear him present some of his findings from America’s Bilingual Century.
Included in his presentation will be how American bilinguals are overcoming some of the stubborn myths that can pose challenges within the university community, such as “Why bother? The whole world speaks English,” “Why bother? Technology will make language learning obsolete.” And “Fine, but other skills are more important.”
Guest Speaker Bio:
Steve Leveen is the author of America’s Bilingual Century: How Americans are giving the gift of bilingualism to themselves, their loved ones, and their country (America the Bilingual Press, January 2021). Based on a decade of research, plus hundreds of interviews with language teachers and scholars as well as bilinguals, this foundational work puts forth a new vision for America, one that Steve maintains is already coming into focus throughout the country—namely, an America where nearly all who live here speak English and another language.
In researching America’s Bilingual Century, Steve spent two fellowship years at Harvard and Stanford, interviewing some of the country’s major scholars of bilingualism. He also drew on the dozens of podcasts he recorded as part of ACTFL’s Lead with Languages campaign.
America’s Bilingual Century drew early praise from a host of first readers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Kennedy; CNN executive Calvin Sims; bestselling authors David Allen, Amy Chua and Kevin Kelly; popular linguists John McWhorter and Gaston Dorren; and Duolingo cofounder Luis von Ahn. Guadalupe Valdés, Ph.D., a professor of education at Stanford University, calls the book “a key must-read for our time.”
America’s Bilingual Century is part of the America the Bilingual Project, an advocacy initiative that Steve began in 2017 to help foster a stronger and healthier nation through bilingualism. The project welcomes not only bilinguals both also those aspiring to be.
This event is open for registration in Yale Connect through the Center for Language Study (CLS) group and the CLS Graduate Students and FLTAs. An invite email will also be sent to Faculty, Students and other guests. If you would like to attend, but an email invite was not sent, please contact Maria Ideliu
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March 22, 2021 | ||
1:00pm | PlayPosit Workshop |
A focused workshop on PlayPosit, a common-good video learning tool that is provided to Yale University faculty and which enables the addition of multiple types of interactions right in the video. This session will be facilitated by Angie Whalen, PlayPosit Account Manager. Come learn more about how to create multimodal interactive videos to enhance student engagement in language classes. This event is posted in Yale Connect through the Center for Language Study (CLS) group and the CLS Graduate Students and FLTAs. An invite email will also be sent to Faculty, Students and other guests. If you would like to attend, but an email invite was not sent, please contact Maria Ideliu. |
March 25, 2021 | ||
12:45pm | CLS Brown Bag Series: Post-communicative approaches in language teaching |
Language pedagogy currently finds itself in the “post-methods era” which is marked by a critical re-examination of communicative language teaching (CLT). Among the main criticisms of CLT are its primary focus on transactional and largely oral language production and its lack of emphasis on culture. The widely-cited 2007 MLA Report pointed to the growing divide between language and content and called for new approaches to language education that would better integrate the language curricula and enhance the intellectual focus of language instruction. This has led to methodologies which place a greater emphasis on texts, engage the learners in more collaborative activities both inside and beyond the language classroom, and focus on authentic language use.
In this Brown Bag, Nelleke will start by giving a brief overview of post-communicative methodologies, and then Angela Lee-Smith (EALL), Luna Najera (Spanish and Portuguese), and Ezgi Yalcin (NELC) will show some examples of classroom activities that implement these new approaches.
This event is open for registration in Yale Connect through the Center for Language Study (CLS) group and the CLS Graduate Students and FLTAs. An invite email will also be sent to Faculty, Students and other guests. If you would like to attend, but an email invite was not sent, please contact Maria Ideliu.
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March 26, 2021 | ||
3:30pm | CLS Virtual Happy Hour: Game Time |
Please join us for a fun virtual happy hour including a Jeopardy game. This event is open for registration in Yale Connect through the Center for Language Study (CLS) group and the CLS Graduate Students and FLTAs. An invite email will also be sent to Faculty, Students and other guests. If you would like to attend, but an email invite was not sent, please contact Maria Ideliu |
March 30, 2021 | ||
2:00pm | Graduate Students Event: First Jobs After Yale Panel |
Are you interested in exploring careers beyond academia? Are you wondering what a first job might look like after you leave Yale? Are you unsure what a non-academic career trajectory looks like? Join us for a panel discussion, in which we will hear from Amanda Lerner and Veronica Mayer, both of whom are recent Yale PhDs in languages and literatures. Both panelists will give us an overview of their career trajectories and their work. You will also get a chance to ask any questions that you have. This is sure to be an interesting conversation; we hope that you can join us!
This event is open for registration in Yale Connect through the CLS Graduate Students and FLTAs. An invite email will also be sent. If you would like to attend, but an email invite was not sent, please contact Chandler Abshire or Sarah Glenski, CLS Graduate Fellows. |