The Department of French and Italian announces the Italian Language Teachers' Workshop at the University of Southern California: "Culture in a Communicative Classroom" in Los Angeles, CA. Saturday, October 15, 2016

This one-day workshop at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles is an occasion for Italian language instructors from Southern California and beyond to come together to discuss teaching Italian at the novice and/or intermediate levels. We designed this conference with the intention that participants will exchange actual lesson plans, activities, short video-clips of themselves interacting with their students, language acquisition technologies, materials, best practices, and strategies that they incorporate in their classrooms. Our hope is that all participants in this one-day workshop will walk away with ideas and materials that they can immediately implement in their courses and will have the opportunity to make real connections with other Italian basic language professionals in their field.

All presentations (in English or Italian) should address the needs of novice and/or intermediate students of Italian.

Topics may include:
-interpretation of culture
-"keeping culture in the target language," is it necessary?
-social networks, connecting students with online communities
-best practices in online searches
-archiving activities
-explicit vs. implicit presentation of culture
-assessing culture
-application of ACTFL standards on culture (cultural products, perspectives, and practices) and comparisons

Proposal submission deadline: April 25, 2016.

Length of the abstract (300 words with title)

Please send abstracts to Alessio Filippi and James M. Fortney at [email protected] and [email protected].

For more information please see the ILT conference website at https://dornsife.usc.edu/italian-language-teachers-workshop-ilt/