Grant Recipient: Barbara Schmenk, Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies
Project Team: Barbara Schmenk, Sara Ghaffarian*, Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies
*Graduate student
(Project timeline: September 2015 - August 2016)
Description
The main goal of the project is to develop and pilot test a teaching methodology for university language courses which is grounded in emerging theoretical work on translingual and transcultural competence (TTC). This will be accomplished through an experimental course redesign in an intermediate German course with the goal to foster students’ TTC. Contrary to traditional language education at tertiary level with its focus on developing proficiency in another language, recent research and theory has strongly underlined the importance of prior knowledge in other languages, which needs to be systematically integrated into language programs. In order to achieve this, courses need to be revised so as to build on the students’ multilingualism and their cultural diversity to allow them to capitalize on their prior knowledge and skills. This pedagogical framework is innovative and challenging. The project results will thus be useful to developing appropriate language teaching methodologies that cater to multilingual and international students.
Outcomes
The outcomes of this project encompass enhanced teaching as well as deep student learning. The very core of the project, the development of TTC in an intermediate German course (GER 211: Integrative Language Seminar I), is closely aligned to what “enhanced language teaching” and “deep learning in foreign language classes” entails, as described in the final report of the UW Task Force (2011, pp. 6ff.):
- Students retain cultural and linguistic knowledge and skills and apply them to German language and culture tasks.
- They relate their prior cultural and linguistic knowledge to the new material through transcultural and translingual reflection, which most certainly involves seeing the world, ideas, and concepts differently.
- Through task-based projects and activities, they have several options to engage in independent, critical, and analytical thinking which requires them to take responsibility for their learning and collaborate with their peers on group projects.
Goals
Given the importance of these competencies in a globalized world, I revised the course to focus explicitly on learners as multilinguals who bring to the classroom a plethora of knowledge and experience with other languages and cultures, which ought to be included – and reflected on – in their German language learning processes. The biggest challenge lay in the fact that even though transculturalism has been widely promoted across campuses, it has remained a rather theoretical buzzword. There is yet to be developed a systematic framework for its practical implementation. The project therefore involved developing new course components as well as considerably modifying some of the existing components and activities.
Therefore, the goals of the project are twofold:
a) The theoretical constructs research has suggested to-date need to be broken down further so as to be applicable to university language courses
b) Design and implementation of appropriate learning activities and tasks
Impact
- At the individual level: I revised the course and developed a new module that is explicitly geared towards fostering transcultural and translingual competence. A PhD student conducted am empirical investigation of the students’ development of translingual and transcultural competence throughout the course of the term. She will disseminate the results in her PhD dissertation.
- At the Department/School and/or Faculty/Unit levels: The project funded through this LITE seed grant contributes to ongoing departmental curriculum changes. In the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, we have decided to integrate units and modules that foster translingual and transcultural competence in all our undergraduate courses. In the coming winter term, we will offer a new course (GER 200: Transcultural German Studies) that I am developing in in conjunction with a colleague.
- At the institutional (uWaterloo) level: I am planning to present some of the results of the project at the 2017 OND conference (together with Sara Ghaffarian).
- At the national and/or international levels:
- Paper presentation: German through transcultural lenses: Fostering symbolic competence in the university language classroom. American Association of Applied Linguistics, April 2016 (Ghaffarian/Schmenk)
- Paper presentation: Refining the Dimensions of SC for the University Language Classroom. Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Philadelphia, January 2017 (Ghaffarian; accepted)
Implications
- Involvement in other activities or projects: I am involved with the ongoing curricular changes of the undergraduate curriculum in German, and the grant project contributed significantly to my understanding of what undergraduate students can accomplish with respect to translingual and transcultural competence, and how. It also demonstrated more clearly what challenges we are facing when we wish to make TTC an overarching goal of our UG program.
- Connections with people from different departments, faculties, and/or disciplines about teaching and learning: In the workshops that I conduct for graduate students of French and German (Certificate in University Language Teaching), the grant helped my to develop new course components for my own class, and it helped my develop a workshop for the CULT program that I will offer in 2016-17 for the first time. This will further the collaboration between colleagues from the French Dept. and the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies (e.g., our discussions and exchanges at the annual Waterloo Colloquium on Language Teaching, which has for the past few years involved participants from both departments).
References
Project Reference List (PDF)