Announcements

Preparing Language Teachers for the 21st Century:

Sixth International Language Teacher Education Conference

May 28–30, 2009

The George Washington University
Washington, D.C.

Designed for practitioners and researchers involved in the preparation and ongoing professional development of language teachers, LTE 2009 will address the education of teachers of all languages, at all instructional and institutional levels, and in the many national and international contexts in which this takes place, including: English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) instruction; foreign/modern/world language teaching; bilingual education; immersion education; indigenous and minority language education; and the teaching of less commonly taught languages.

Featured Plenary Speakers:

• Second Language Teacher Education in Times of Change

Jack Richards, The Regional Language Centre

• Teacher Cognition and Communicative Language Teaching

Simon Borg, University of Leeds

• The Moral Lives of Teacher Educators

Bill Johnston, Indiana University

• A Sociocultural Perspective on Language Teacher Education

Karen Johnson, Pennsylvania State University

The conference includes sixteen exciting pre-conference workshops to be held on Thursday, 135 paper presentations, discussion sessions & poster sessions and 21 symposia on a wide variety of topics. 

For More Information

To find out more about the conference see: http://nclrc.org/lte2009 or register online!

To contact the conference organizers: lte@nclrc.org

This conference is sponsored by the National Capital Language Resource Center, which is a collaboration of Georgetown University, The George Washington University, and the Center for Applied Linguistics. The conference was founded by the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition in 1999 and was held at the University of Minnesota in 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007. CARLA is collaborating with NCLRC on the upcoming conference to be held in Washington D.C. in 2009.

STARTALK Program: Mandarin Elementary Immersion Summer Teacher Education Program

June 22–July 17, 2009
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN

The StarTalk Mandarin Elementary Immersion Summer Teacher Education Program (MEISTEP) is an exciting new four-week program for Chinese immersion teachers to learn how to integrate language, literacy, content, and culture in their classrooms. Teachers participating in this program will begin with an intensive research-based introduction to the challenges, options, and issues in the unique world of K-12 immersion education.

During the first week, participants will examine effective instructional strategies specific to the Chinese immersion context and will work together to develop content-based curriculum that systematically attends to language, culture, and literacy development. Using the principles covered in the first week, the second week will focus on effective ways of teaching mathematics in the elementary immersion context. In weeks three and four, teachers will have the opportunity to apply these new concepts in a summer program designed for elementary Mandarin immersion students. Participating teachers will have the option of taking courses for credit and may earn 2-4 graduate credits.

MEISTEP is a collaboration of Confucius Institute at the University of Minnesota, the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in partnership with Yinghua Academy, a K-5 Mandarin immersion charter school. Faculty and staff at each institution bring a wide range of program experience and immersion expertise to this collaborative effort.

Who can participate? Participants must be English-proficient post-baccalaureates with native to near-native proficiency in Mandarin Chinese who are teaching in, or are seeking to teach in, a Mandarin Chinese elementary immersion program in the US where Mandarin is used to teach a minimum of 50 percent of school subjects during the elementary years.

Registration

Registration is limited and should be completed by June 1st.

For more information and registration forms see: http://www.confucius.umn.edu/meistep/

CARLA Summer Institutes 2009

Most of the CARLA Summer Institutes are Full!

This has been another banner year for the CARLA summer institute program. Six of the institutes have already filled and for several of those the waiting list is also closed. Many of the others are close to filling. Go to the CARLA institute web page to check availability before you register.

Registration Details

The cost of each of the CARLA summer institutes is $350 if registration is received by May 31, 2009 and $400 after that date. More information and registration forms are available on the CARLA website at: http://www.carla.umn.edu/institutes. To request a copy of a brochure you can email the CARLA office at: carla@umn.edu.

Note: The summer institutes were developed and are supported, in part, by the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI Language Resource Center program and by the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development and College of Liberal Arts. The LCTL stipends are supported by the University of Minnesota's Title VI National Resource Centers.

Program Updates

Selected Papers from the Biennial International Conference on Language Teacher Education 

Since 1999 CARLA has sponsored the biennial international conference on language teacher education and is a proud cosponsor of the sixth conference hosted by the National Capital Language Resource Center this May. For each of the past conferences a volume of selected papers has been published through the CARLA working paper series to further the dialogue among language teacher educators from all contexts. We are pleased to announce the publication of the selected papers from the Fifth International Conference on Language Teacher Education held in May 2007.

Bridging Context, Making Connections:
Selected Papers from the Fifth International Conference on Language Teacher Education 

Edited by Mike Anderson and Anne Lazaraton
CARLA Working Paper Series • May 2009

Eight papers originally presented at the Fifth International Conference on Language Teacher Education were selected for inclusion in this volume dedicated to the diversity of voices in the field. While each paper speaks to a different teaching context, they all highlight ‘best practices’ in language teacher education. Some of the papers address practices in different contexts and others challenge readers to rethink the knowledge base of language teacher education, to think critically about what this knowledge consists of and why, and to describe classroom and professional tools that will best equip language teachers to help their students achieve their language learning goals. 

The volume includes the following papers:

• Equipping Teachers to be Language Explorers: Exploring Language in the Classroom by Elaine Tarone, University of Minnesota
• Sociopolitical Contexts and Attitudes of Inquiry: Implications for Teacher Education by Jo Tyler, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA
• Action Research in the Constructivist Model for Language Teacher Education by Sarah Jourdain, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY
• Multicultural Education in a K-12 Modern Language Department: Reconciling the Professional Development Experience by Martha Bigelow and Pamela Wesely, University of Minnesota and Lori Opsahl, Minneapolis, MN
• Program assessment Based on Second Language Teacher Education Standards by Ann Sax Mabbott, Hamline University, St. Paul, MN
• Professional Practitioners with Adaptive Expertise: Teacher Development in Djibouti by Diana L. Dudzik, University of Minnesota
• Instructional Choices of Mississippi Foreign Language Teachers by Elizabeth Harrison, Houston High School, Houston, MS
• The Professional Development of Teachers of Heritage Language Learners: A Matrix by Olga E. Kagan, University of California at Los Angeles and Kathleen E. Dillon, University of California Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching, UC Davis, CA

Don’t forget these great collections from other past conferences!

Voice and Vision in Language Teacher Education:
Selected Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Language Teacher Education 
Edited by Bill Johnston and Kristen Walls 
CARLA Working Paper Series • May 2007

Creating Teacher Community:
Selected Papers from the Third International Conference on Language Teacher Education 
Edited by Martha H. Bigelow and Constance L. Walker 
CARLA Working Paper Series # 24 • December 2004

Research & Practice in Language Teacher Education: Voices from the Field:
Selected Papers from the First International Conference on Language Teacher Education 
Edited by Bill Johnston and Suzanne Irujo 
CARLA Working Paper Series #19 • May 2001

Order from the CARLA website:
http://www.carla.umn.edu/resources/working-papers/index.html

The book Second Language Teacher Education: International Perspectives includes many chapters that were originally presented as papers at the Second International Conference on Language Teacher Education, held in May 2001. This book was edited by Diane J. Tedick and was published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates in 2005.

CARLA Publications

American Council on Immersion Education Newsletter

The Spring issue of the American Council on Immersion Education (ACIE) Newsletter  has recently been published and distributed to ACIE members and immersion schools around the country. This theme issue focused on the Immersion Education: Pathways to Bilingualism and Beyond conference held in Minnesota in October 2008. Look for the following articles in the newsletter:

• The Bridge: From Research to Practice –Reviews of Immersion Conference Plenary Addresses
• Symposium Review –Three Perspectives on the University of Ottawa's New Immersion Program
• Research Reports –Bilingualis, Biliteracy, Biculturalism; Recent Research on the Goals of Two-way Immersion
• Best Practices –Language Awareness: Examining the Role of Language in Society
• Immersion Milestones –Twenty Years of Swedish Immersion in Finland
• School Profile –America's First Chinese Immersion Charter School

Become an ACIE member today to get the newsletter!!  Details available on the web: http://www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/ACIE.html

And don’t forget the ACIE Archives: Ten years worth of archived ACIE articles, perfect for staff development readings and discussion, are available on the immersion pages of the CARLA website. See: http://www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/acie/index.html.

Conferences Coming Up

Several faculty and staff members within the CARLA network are participating in the following sessions at several key languages conferences this spring.

IALLT–International Association for Language Learning Technology Conference
     May 26–30, 2009
     Atlanta, Georgia

Digital Storytelling Tools: This ain’t yer grannie tellin’ tales!

Wednesday, May 27

8:00 am. - Noon

With storytelling as a focus, this workshop provides hands-on practice with a number of tools to accomplish the task with pizzazz! We’ll look at free, easy, online applications for the story
creation process from storyboard to evaluation. We’ll discuss the advantages and challenges of a variety of storytelling tools that integrate multimedia, foster collaboration, and share student work with a larger audience. Discover tools students will be excited to use to create their stories in the target language! Bring 4-8 pictures to tell your own story – or your grannie’s - in the workshop.

Presenters: Marlene Johnshoy (CARLA-University of Minnesota) and Lauren Rosen (University of Wisconsin)

Helping Teachers Learn: Best Practices for Professional Development

Friday, May 29

2:15–3:00 pm

Many of us are involved with the professional development of language teachers, either with faculty on our campuses, or offering workshops regionally and nationally. The workshop is the standard traditional format, but is it the best way for teachers to learn and improve their teaching? This presentation will outline the results of a literature review on best practices for professional development and participants will discuss various models suggested for providing professional development for teachers. Building on this discussion, differences will be described for the preparation needed to teach online.

Presenter: Marlene Johnshoy (CARLA-University of Minnesota)

Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics Annual Conference
     May 27-29, 2009
     Ottawa, Canada

Symposium: Immersion Student Language Use Across Program Contexts

Thursday, May 28

8:30-10:45 am

Tarone and Swain (1995) called for systematic, classroom-based research of immersion students’ naturally occurring language practices. The research presented here examines the language use of 5th graders across three U.S. language immersion contexts. Together these data shed light on factors that influence which early adolescent immersion students use and for what purposes.
Presenters: Maggie Broner (St. Olaf College), Tara Forune, Symposium Organizer (CARLA--University of Minnesota), Kim Potowski (The University of Illinois at Chicago), Diane Tedick, Discussant (University of Minnesota)

Sixth International Conference on Language Teacher Education
     May 28-30, 2009
    Washington D.C.

Preparing Teachers to Explore Learner Language

In Session: Research on Critical Social Factors in Second and World Language Learning            

Thursday, May 28

9:00 am - Noon

Learner Language is the target language in an intermediate stage, constantly developing as the learner progresses. Newly-developed materials that add a hands-on component to basic second-language acquisition courses for language teachers are demonstrated. Sample exercises from a workbook with videos of learners, developed within a framework of Exploratory Practice, are presented. Teacher candidates using this workbook analyze samples of learner language to determine the language features that learners do and do not know. Adaptation of these materials for different populations is discussed, based on the responses from teacher-learners during field testing.
Presenter: Elaine Tarone (CARLA, University of Minnesota)

Learning Advocacy: Teacher Education Practices and Teacher Knowledge     

Thursday, May 28

9:00 am - Noon

How can teacher education support teachers' development of essential skills, knowledge and dispositions for advocacy for language minority youth and their families? Through professional collaborations and co-teaching, school reform initiatives and everyday teaching for social justice, ESOL teachers can be effective advocates for access to equal educational opportunities for English language learners. Participants explore activities which prepare ESOL teachers for advocacy and school leadership roles, share their own practices, and generate ideas for research on preparing teachers for advocacy using a variety of research methods.
Presenters: Martha Bigelow (University of Minnesota) and Lisa Mogan