Blog

“Learning” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by  CollegeDegrees360  Last week, #langchat contributors were excited for a topic that everyone was eager to tackle – student participation in the World Language classroom! Langchatters joined in to discuss the finer points of how to encourage, track and assess participation, including things like defining what participation looks like, ways to support hesitant learners, […]

“Teacher meets with student!” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by NJLA: New Jersey Library Association Last week, #langchat participants settled in for a fast hour of discussing feedback, and they ways that it can be used to helps students improve in various modes as their proficiency increases. Langchatters shared their thoughts on ways to actually work on […]

“SAD_Hortons_Kids 114” (CC BY 2.0) by  US Department of Education  Last week, Langchatters were ready for a fast-paced hour of discussion on how to effectively recycle vocabulary in the world language classroom. Participants discussed how to write their learning targets to reuse vocabulary, and shared their thoughts on getting students to understand the importance of using old vocabulary […]

“Estudiante AliderJoven” (CC BY 2.0) by  jgoge  Last week, Langchatters were ready for an action-packed chat on authentic resources for reading. Participants discussed their go-to reading sources and talked about when they introduce them. They also shared their strategies to scaffold texts in an attempt to make them more accessible for students. Langchatters then considered how students can […]

“College Students” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by  CollegeDegrees360  If you snapped along to last week’s #langchat snapper, now you can snap for the summary! Participants were eager to discuss four unrelated questions that have been weighing on their minds. They shared their favorite ways to promote and advocate for world language learning. Participants then moved from chatting about advocacy […]

“Ayesha leads a Q&A with author Jay Heinr” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by  THINKGlobalSchool  Welcome back! Last week, #langchat joined forces with #GlobalEdChat for a chat on the importance of 21st century skills for world language students. Instructors first discussed challenges to integrating these skills into classrooms. Participants then considered how to promote life, career, critical thinking, communication, and […]

“IMG47” (CC BY 2.0) by  US Department of Education  Last week, #langchat had some great questions (and answers!) about inquiring-based learning! Participants described what inquiry-based learning looks like and discussed how to design and evaluate a quality end product. Instructors also shared tips on how to scaffold to support student inquiry in the target language at different proficiency […]

“01052016 Tea with Teachers” (CC BY 2.0) by  US Department of Education  Welcome back to #langchat! Last week, participants discussed conflict resolution and collaboration in world language departments. They reflected on what language instructors need and need not agree on, and also weighed in on how to meet common goals and collaborate when colleagues have different methods and […]

“2015-07_SC+_W4_Class_LL -135” (CC BY 2.0) by  jencu  Last week, Langchatters got (inter)personal! Participants considered how proficiency level affects interpersonal task design. Next, acknowledging that learner output is based on perceived need to produce language, they reflected on how to build a feeling of need into task design. Langchatters then discussed their thoughts on ideal group size and make-up […]

“Tomás” (CC BY-NC 2.0) by  jcmejia_acera  Happy New Year from #langchat! Langchatters started off 2016 by discussing how they plan to be an EPIC language teacher this year. Participants shared the goals they ENVISION for 2016, reflected on how they will PLAN a route to each of those goals, talked about how they will IMPLEMENT a goal timeline, […]