Pragmatics and Spanish Community Service Learning
For their first reflection assignment, students in SPAN 232 who hadn't started their work in the community yet had to visit this blog and write a reaction to one of the posts.
More students commented on "Are Spanish-Speakers from Venus and English-Speakers from Mars" than any other post. Students who have studied abroad have experienced these cultural "misunderstandings" themselves and have their own stories to tell. And students who haven't studied abroad yet understand that culture and language will be tied together when they begin their work in the community.
So I thought I'd mention the resources in this area that the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) offers:
- This page offers an array of information and tools for teaching pragmatics / speech acts.
- This summer they will offer a 5-day workshop on "Language and Culture in Sync: Teaching the Pragmatics of a Second Language." (Click here to see the full schedule of summer institutes.)
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