In the month of July, we are re-running some of our favorite episodes from the first year of the podcast just in case you started listening recently or you always meant to go back and re-listen to a few of your favorites! We’ll be back with new episodes in August.
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In episode 42, Stacey interviews Daniel Woolsey, an associate professor of Spanish at a liberal arts college in Michigan, who teaches courses including fourth-semester Spanish and Hispanic linguistics. Daniel explains that language teachers can focus on critical cultural content, let go of explicit grammar instruction, and trust the acquisition process to take place.
Also check out this EdPuzzle to guide your listening!
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Show Notes
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Daniel Woolsey grew up in Santiago, Chile, and earned his Ph.D. in Language Education from Indiana University. He has been teaching Spanish at the college level for twenty years, including courses in Hispanic Linguistics and Language Teaching Methods. Daniel is especially passionate about first- and second-year Spanish courses: bridging SLA theory with teaching practices, and incorporating critical topics from culture, history and literature into beginning levels of instruction. He is co-author of two textbooks for first and second year Spanish courses, Ritmos: Beginning Spanish Language & Culture (2012, 2017) and its forthcoming intermediate counterpart Rostros (2019). Info and free demo of his textbooks can be found at: https://evialearning.com/ritmos-store.
For more information and to connect with Daniel, visit his faculty page.
For instructors interested in moving toward content-based communicative teaching, he recommends some resources…
…Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen, by James Lee and Bill VanPatten
…How Language Are Learned, by Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada
…Bill VanPatten’s podcast Tea with BVP (Daniel loves whatever BVP is doing!)
Resources from the show…
…The 2017 conference https://hope.edu/academics/modern-classical-languages/crisis-management-innovation/
…more about James Lee, the instructor Daniel mentioned from Indiana University
…MLA 2007 white paper Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World