Dance is an essential cultural product often overlooked in curriculum and lesson design in favor of sports, literature, visual arts, music, and other products from the target language culture. Given the similarities between the national standards for dance and for learning languages, movement and dance activities merit a greater role in world…

This classroom practice article explores the integration of TalkAbroad, an online language conversation platform, in an undergraduate World Languages Education program to support pre-service language teachers' oral proficiency development. Two pre-service teachers, facing challenges like family responsibilities and limited study abroad…

Even though peer review enjoys sound theoretical support, classroom research has not always provided a clear picture of its effectiveness, particularly when it comes to form-focused editing. In addition to yielding conflicting findings with respect to the number of corrections students make based on peer feedback (Connor & Asenavage, 1994;…

An accurate portrayal of contemporary Spanish in Costa Rica necessitates the inclusion of a discussion of forms of address. Costa Rica is commonly listed among the countries that include "voseo" as part of its pronominal paradigm. The present descriptive study elucidates the sociolinguistic reality of "voseo" in Costa Rica and…

As students feel empowered to select their own goals, they forge their own journeys to success. A culturally sustaining tool, student reflection is an informative practice for self-paced growth in language learning and beyond. A French and a Spanish teacher share their protocols to bring goal-setting into any classroom, along with the research and…

This paper explores the policies and ideologies affecting language education in Rhode Island, where as a result of a State Language Roadmap, groups are working at the grassroots level toward the implementation of dual language immersion in all public school districts. The author points out that while the push from business for multilingual…

This paper argues for bringing insights from linguistics into the world language classroom. At any level of study, such insights can add intellectual interest to the study of a target language (TL), and can also help students accept and acquire aspects of the TL that are different from their first language or that are inherently challenging. As a…

Native Spanish speakers from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, who are also English language learners, are a growing population of students in the K-12 classrooms throughout the United States. This particular group of students is oftentimes placed in Spanish-as-a-foreign-language classes that fail to meet their linguistic development…

This investigation explores oral proficiency outcomes in short-term study abroad programs, as well as the interaction of those outcomes with the type of second language (L2) courses involved. For three years, speaking ability gains were measured in a study abroad setting among intermediate learners of Spanish under two different course conditions:…

Student interactive exchanges with native speakers of a target language may increase learners' self-confidence, production, and oral comprehension in the target language, as well as students' intercultural communicative competence (ICC). One approach to interactive exchanges is video-conferencing (VC). This article discusses three experiences with…

This article presents a model for a short-term interdisciplinary study abroad program designed specifically to foster intercultural competence. It provides a description of a one-month interdisciplinary General Education Summer Abroad Program in Valencia, Spain, that attempts to sensitize students to cultural differences, to engage students to a…

This investigation compared the beliefs about foreign language (FL) learning held by African American students enrolled in elementary courses with those enrolled at the intermediate level. The following research question was addressed: Do African American students at the elementary level have significantly different beliefs from students at the…

This study uses a cohort model--a combination of a study group, with readings and discussion, and collaborative curriculum design as a professional development tool--as a context for investigating a group of middle and high school world language teachers' beliefs about effective curriculum. The study explores whether this model could shift…

In an effort to make the learning of the target culture a meaningful and motivating experience for foreign language (FL) learners, the researchers designed and implemented a semester-long project in which intermediate Spanish students used Pinterest to pin and comment on cultural artifacts and websites in the target language (TL) that were of…

In this study, 64 master's students and program graduates in French, Spanish, and TESOL evaluated their online experiences in two areas in which learning effectiveness is often questioned in online settings: linguistic proficiency and cultural knowledge. This study was informed by national data documenting attitudes toward online learning,…