2022 Fall IWL Speaker Series
Speaker: Maria Shardakova
Location: Zoom, Passcode: IWL

Over the past few decades, the field of second language research and pedagogy has undergone dramatic changes, manifested in the growing attention to the social, cultural and historical embeddedness of language, which is seen as a constituent and constitutive of social realities. Instead of prioritizing individual self-expression, we are now focusing on conventional forms that help people accomplish social tasks, build relationships, and create communities. This socially informed approach to language is one of the reasons why communicative language teaching has been often complemented, if not replaced, with some variation of sociocultural methodologies, such as (multi)literacy pedagogy, genre-based pedagogy, content-based instruction, and the like.

In this workshop, we will focus on genre-based pedagogy and discuss how it can help us develop new content, integrate language and culture, and operationalize the social context. We will start with a brief comparison of the genre-based approach (GBA) with other popular methods, and then discuss how to use the GBA to create a curriculum or teaching unit. We will build on your knowledge of backward design principles, proficiency-based assessment, learning contexts and different course designs - modular topic-based courses, project-based courses, and content-based courses. We will conclude with a brief “tour” of a newly developed open-access online resource that introduces language educators to genre pedagogy by offering a step-by-step guide to creating genre-based learning units.

You can access this resources here: https://expand.iu.edu/browse/language-wkshp/courses/genre-based-language-teaching(link is external)

Presenter
Maria Shardakova is an Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, where she directs the Russian Flagship and the Russian Language programs, teaches courses in L2 pedagogy and assessment, and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Slavica. Her research interests include second language acquisition, pragmatics, discursive-constructionist approaches to identity, language assessment, and second language acquisition. 

Email: maalshar@indiana.edu