Curriculum Design Research as a Learning Experience and a Teachable Moment

OUTTAKE

For years, I wondered how I could teach world languages in a more impactful way. Each semester, I would repeat the same process of contextualizing the grammar, using comprehensible input, teaching in the target language, and engaging my students with fancy graphic organizers, songs, and videos, but to no avail. They would consistently leave my class with some knowledge about the language, but they still were not getting a true reflection of its usage in the real world. I knew something had to be done.

As a second language learner, I have always known that language learning in American classrooms has room for improvement. I learned French and Spanish by memorizing verb conjugations, long lists of vocabulary, and through various pneumonic devices. However, researchers now understand that second language acquisition (SLA) is a process that takes time. Likewise, effective language teaching does not focus on memorization but instead pushes students to make form-meaning connections via processing instruction. Although SLA theory dictates many rules, language instructors still lack in curriculum and instructional approaches rooted in education. But what could educators be doing differently?