View / download statement of teaching philosophy

Over the course of my academic career in Spanish language and literature, I have experienced firsthand the rewards and challenges of acquiring a second language and the competencies of communication and critical analysis that accompany this endeavor. As a U.S. student seeking knowledge of other languages, literatures, and cultures, and as an instructor seeking to impart this same knowledge to my students, I have received both practical and formal training in modern language pedagogy and the possibilities of critical engagement with multiple cultures and discourses in the classroom. These experiences, supported by my completion of a Certificate in Second Language Acquisition at the Yale University Center for Language Study, have enabled me to integrate theory and practice into a content-driven, literacy-based, and communicative approach to teaching. Through these methods, I prioritize the acquisition of intercultural competence, analytical literacy vis-à-vis authentic materials, and meaningful, contextualized written and oral communication at all levels of instruction.

First and foremost, I strive to create a classroom environment in which all students are encouraged to engage in spontaneous, genuine language production. As a student who was hesitant to speak and write in language classes due to fear of committing errors, I recognize the importance of a low affective filter that permits students to view mistakes as a natural component of the learning process. By utilizing low-stakes written and oral communication tasks such as free writing, brainstorming, and pre-task conversation, as well as error correction techniques that prompt students to notice and rectify their own mistakes, I provide my students with the opportunity to simultaneously develop accuracy and fluency throughout the acquisition process.

In addition to linguistic proficiency, however, I also attend to pragmatic and sociocultural proficiency, instructing my students in culturally appropriate interpretation and interaction. For example, in an elementary lesson on health, I begin with an interactive vocabulary review that simulates a dialogue between a pharmacist and customer, emphasizing aspects of formal register and differences between U.S. and Latin American pharmacies. After I guide students through a task in which they browse an authentic sales ad to select medications for a sick friend, they write formal e-mails to the parents of their friend, complete with the culturally standardized formulas appropriate to this genre. Similarly, when working with literary texts in the classroom, I draw students’ attention to the circumstances in which particular types of language use are embedded. In an intermediate course, for instance, I have used the short story “El etnógrafo” by Jorge Luis Borges to conduct an action research project on increasing students’ awareness of metaphor in Spanish. By varying the genres with which students engage and through which they communicate, I heighten their consciousness of the appropriate uses of Spanish in specific contexts, thus fostering transcultural competence in addition to linguistic competence.

This emphasis on multiple literacies allows me to reduce the divide between language and literature in my pedagogy, as I incorporate a variety of authentic texts for analysis in the classroom.[1] I guide students through a critical examination of “traditional” and “non-traditional” genres, including literary works, film clips, advertisements, and websites to consider the relationship between linguistic form and meaning. For example, I ask my intermediate students to analyze the role of hypothetical si clauses in a UNICEF campaign ad in Uruguay that utilizes this grammatical structure. By drawing attention to the purposes of rhetorical strategies across different genres, I enhance my students’ sensitivity to the subtleties of language in context and prepare them for advanced literary and cultural studies in Spanish.

I employ all of these methods to foster my students’ appreciation of language as a contextualized, discursive phenomenon, rather than as a static collection of grammatical forms. In accordance with my own interest in interdisciplinary approaches to Hispanic literature and culture, I provide clear contextual frameworks for vocabulary, grammar, and literature lessons that link language and cultural production to social and historical phenomena. Whether my elementary students are using new vocabulary to complete an online shopping task at the Spanish department store El Corte Inglés, or my intermediate students are using the passive “se” construction to describe where artworks may be found (and what may be observed in each work) during a virtual tour of a Mexican art gallery, I situate grammatical forms as tools of communication that allow students to participate in multiple linguistic and cultural communities. I even invite students to consider Spanish-language contexts they might encounter in their own lives; in a lesson on media and popular culture, my intermediate students investigate the structure and content of El País and then create a newspaper for Spanish speakers on their campus. Similarly, in the advanced interdisciplinary courses I have designed, students view Hispanic literature through the lenses of art history, architecture, and science, thus extending the study of Spanish beyond the confines of the traditional language classroom. Across all levels of instruction, my attention to context requires students not only to negotiate in the target language and employ grammar in meaningful communication, but also to sharpen their abilities to successfully navigate a variety of texts and sociocultural circumstances.

Through my pedagogical use of authentic tasks, multiple genres, and cross-disciplinary frames of reference, I provide the conditions necessary for my students to develop competencies that will permit them to become effective communicators and agents of intercultural dialogue. By integrating the structural study of Spanish language and literature into real-world contexts and cultural and historical milieus, I equip students with the ability to perceive themselves as active participants in a dynamic, living language community and to attain a broad literacy in Spanish-language literary and cultural production.

 

[1] See the 2007 report by the Modern Language Association Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, titled “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World”.