Sixth International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education: Connecting Research and Practice Across Contexts

Laptop Poster Session for Graduate Students

Spanish

One-Way Second/Foreign Language Immersion
Two-Way Bilingual Immersion
One-Way Developmental Bilingual Education

Middle School/Junior High
High School
Post-Secondary

This project addresses the need of one foreign language teacher to more effectively serve his 10^th grade blended Spanish heritage and immersion learners class. Within prescribed curriculum, he enriched the deconstruction of Calle 13’s song Latinoamérica with critical, multimodal analysis. Instruction of form was guided by the counterbalanced approach.

“Teaching this blended class has been by far the biggest professional challenge of my career”.  Quotes such as this illuminate the challenge as High School foreign language classes increasingly blend immersion graduates with heritage language learners.  Grammar-driven units lack linguistically complex and cognitively compelling content, often communicating essentialized representations of Latino cultural identity resulting in high attrition of students and teachers.  This object of study is this teacher's enrichment of a prescribed curriculum aimed to critically engage cultural and linguistic resources of his students, and more broadly affirm multilingual communities within school walls.  The study took place in a 10th grade blended class of 1-way immersion and heritage Spanish speakers studying a U of MN curriculum.  With the goal of infusing academic, language arts content, students applied a critical media analysis of the hip hop song Latinoamérica by Calle 13 and artists’ representation of Latinamerican identity through personification, metaphor and intertextuality.  Integrated throughout was study of conjunctions + subjunctive or indicative through noticing, awareness and practice tasks (Lyster, 2007).  Students then chose a song text and video of artists who, through signs and symbols, illuminated the voices of marginalized to communicate a transformative message.  With this song text they applied their own critical media analysis.  Questions included:  How can a critical interpretation of the Cultures and Communities standard (ACTFL.org) draw out student cultural and youth funds of knowledge and engage their transnational identities?  What impact did the counterbalanced approach to focus have on student language?  What were the teacher’s perceptions of this approach to teaching these groups?  This project aspires to expand pedagogical options for teachers of blended classes of Immersion graduates and Heritage Spanish Speakers in a secondary setting.