Friday, April 8
Noon	Welcome Luba Iskold, NEALLT President, Muhlenberg College Stéphane Charitos Director, Language Resource Center at Columbia University,
SESSION 1: 12:30-1:15
Breakout 1	Engaging World Language Students Through Collaborative Community Documentary Projects Ann Warner-Ault, (The College of New Jersey) This presentation discusses the collaboration between a documentary film professor, Spanish professor, and community partners to complete five short documentaries about the Puerto Rican community in Trenton. The documentaries tell hidden stories that are missing from the history books and city archives and convey the richness of local Puerto Rican culture — its history, art, music, and more.
Breakout 2	Blending Instruction for Inclusion - Pedagogies of Care in the Bi/Multilingual Language Learning Classroom Diana Romero, (Columbia University) In this presentation I will share how a newsletter project I started in the Fall 2020 has become a powerful tool to address new realities about inclusiveness and technology in my SPAN 2108 Intermediate Spanish for Heritage Speakers class at Columbia University.
Breakout 3	Building Curricular Repertoire for Heritage Language Learners:  Culturally Responsive Learning Through Folktale Angela Lee-Smith, (Yale University), Mijeong Kim , (Washington University in St. Louis) The presentation will share how folktales can be effectively incorporated as an  effective literacy instructional model for HLLs’ interpersonal, interpretive, presentational, and intercultural communication development. The audience will learn how they can effectively implement communicative tasks into a folktale curriculum. The presenters will showcase examples from a Korean folktale curriculum module, which includes a variety of task sets, practical assessment methods, learners’ reflections, and pedagogical implications.
SESSION 2: 1:20-1:50
Breakout 1	Using Tech to Support Literacy Sarab Al Ani, (Read Learn and Play / Yale University ) This workshop will provide an overview of 'Read, Learn and Play,' a new, open-educational resource for Arabic-language educators that includes ACTFL standards-aligned leveled texts and virtual online practice activities for elementary through university students. Come learn about how you can use this resource in your classroom, and how to create your own materials to support your students' literacy growth, in any language! This project is created with support from the U.S. Department of Education, International Research and Studies Program.
Breakout 2	Teman Bicara: from Classroom Learning to Real-World Learning Anggi Auliyani Suharja, (Language Resource Center, Columbia University) Teman Bicara, Indonesian translation for speaking buddy, is a class project designed to give the students the opportunity to connect, learn, and share with their Indonesian native speakers friends through various class activities.
Breakout 3	CALL and DH: Why Do We Need Both? Dongdong Chen, (Seton Hall University) What are the respective uses of CALL and DH for language education? What is the relationship between CALL and DH? I will argue that the combined use of CALL and DH will reinforce the learning of a target language while also fostering other skills critical to student success.
SESSION 3: 1:55-2:25
Breakout 1	Synchronous/Asynchronous ASL Project Based Learning Julia Silvestri, (Yale University ), Frances Conlin, (Yale University), Andrew Fisher, (Yale University ) This interactive presentation will present a summary of the asynchronous project-based learning component of the ASL program at Yale University--including the rationale, program design, implementation, and mid-year recalibration of the program design. Audience members will be invited to share their experiences with media convergence in classroom communication to achieve project management goals, and to engage in reflective dialogue on the mid-year recalibration and potential future directions.
Breakout 2	Going With and Against the Pedagogical Mainstream: New Realities in the Yiddish Classroom Agnieszka Legutko, (Columbia University) This is an interactive presentation on new methodological realities in the Yiddish language classroom. It features an audio-visual/multi-media component and entails audience participation.
Breakout 3	Chinese SF Film in Independent Study Yingying Huang, (Lafayette College) The Chinese program at Lafayette has a five year language course, a minor, and a self-designed major. I would like to share my experience teaching an independent study using Chinese science fiction films/videos. Background: The independent student is pursuing a Chinese major and is taking my literature course, Chinese Science Fiction, which is taught and read in English, and there are Chinese-language science fiction films and a video-taped drama that have never been dubbed or subtitled. This provides a great opportunity for my independent student to practice Chinese listening, speaking, writing, and translation relying on the readings from the science fiction course. Tasks: The student watches two Chinese-language films and a recorded play and translates them with the help of the Chinese stories that the films are adapted from and the English translations of these stories. The translations can also serve as captions when I screen those films in the science fiction class. Takeaways: While the independent study has just started and I do not have much to show yet, I have made a few interesting discoveries: 1. Translating a flim can take a longer time than expected, as the student may need to listen to a line a dozen times, try to write it down in Chinese and figure out the meaning, before he can translate. 2. To make things easier, I suggested that the student use a voice conversion app, repeating what he hears from the film into his smart phone to see if he gets the correct Chinese sentence. This will also help him practice speaking. 3. Embeding the caption into the videos can be an excruciating task and I believe it is also a digression from language learning, so we will settle with having the translations as Google docs files, which both of us can edit and I can jot down suggestions along the way to help him learn. We are exploring technologies that will help with this learning process, and I hope to hear advice from my audience.
	Break. 2:30 - 2:45
SESSION 4: 2:45 – 3:15
Breakout 1	Language Learning in hybrid modality Anna Iacovella, (Yale University) This panel program will demonstrate that new models for language learning can still be effective since the classroom time focuses on speaking practice and interactions among students in group and pairs activities, and these activities are complemented by the expansion with asynchronous activities outside of the classroom.
Breakout 2	Training Russian Verbs of Motion in Virtual Reality: A Preliminary Case Study Kristin Bidoshi, (Union College) This paper outlines the results of a preliminary case study of students’ use of Поехали, a virtual reality game created in 3D Vista, to train students on the concept of verbal aspect in Russian prefixed verbs of motion. The concept for the program is readily transferable to other languages.
Breakout 3	New Language Classroom, Old Teaching Routines: The Digital Divide in Language Education Leyre Alejaldre Biel (Columbia University), Rachel Rothbaum (Columbia University), Eva Álvarez Ramos (Universidad de Valladolid ),  Belén Mateos Blanco (Universidad de Valladolid ) The rapid transition from face-to-face foreign language teaching to the remote context highlights the digital inequities present in the educational community. In this presentation we will reflect on the challenges that language teachers and learners face in the new digital language classroom. We will also address strategies and digital tools that can be implemented to overcome these difficulties. This ethnographic research is a work in progress that is being carried out in collaboration with the University of Valladolid´s Didactics Department.
SESSION 5: 3:20 – 4:20
Panel	Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Raising Questions and Awareness G. Cory Duclos (Colgate University) Nelleke Van Deusen-Scholl (Yale University) Felix Kronenberg (Michigan State University) Angelika Kraemer (Cornell University) This panel discussion will raise some questions that language educators and administrators should be asking about the work to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. In particular, panelists will explore how the historical evolution of language programs, current administrative structures, pedagogical practices, and the application of classroom technology play a role in creating barriers to this work. Attendees will also be encouraged to share their own perspectives on how best to effect meaningful change within our field.
Saturday, April 9
9:00 - 9:30	Opening Remarks Luba Iskold NEALLT President, Muhlenberg College Angelina Craig-Flórez NEALLT President-elect, Columbia University
9:30 - 10:30	Conference Keynote Greg Kessler, Ohio University Preparing teachers to design meaningful experiences The presenter will share his thoughts about the changing nature of language teaching in relation to technological and pedagogical innovations. He will focus on the importance of designing instructional experiences that harness the potential of these emerging innovations in a thoughtful manner. He will share a number of recent developments related to learning, language and technology, including various forms of automation and machine learning, as well as virtual reality and other forms of immersion. Some of the tools and resources associated with these developments have found their way into language teaching and learning while others certainly will in the near future. He will discuss creative ways to focus on social communication while designing instructional experiences. He will share a number of recent developments related to language and technology and encourage teachers to create meaningful social experiences for learning. Many of these developments have the potential to dramatically alter learning. They may also threaten or intimidate language teachers and learners. The presenter will share thoughts about the need to embrace these developments as we move toward a new era of language learning: One in which these intelligent assistants and resources will significantly contribute to instructional practices.
SESSION 1 10:40-11:10
Breakout 1	Life Story Project: Connecting and Reconnecting People Megumi Watanabe, (Princeton University) Life story project provides a hybrid language learning experience in which students interview people around them to write life stories to be shared with classmates. Through this project, students will notice the variety of the language and culture they study and make more meaningful connections with people who surround them.
Breakout 2	Progressive Incorporation of Telecollaborations in a Small Spanish Program  Maria de la Luz Matus-Mendoza, (Drexel University) This presentation reports the progressive incorporation of telecollaborations in Spanish language and content classes in a small program before and after the forced closures of schools due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. It describes the opportunities and benefits that have afforded the Spanish program and the Modern Language Division as a whole.
Breakout 3	Cracking the Code: Digital Storytelling Website for Russian Heritage Students Svetlana Korshunova, (Princeton University) The presentation aims to show the specific meaning and use of digital storytelling in the Russian heritage language classroom. It argues that this technology tool helps heritage students not only to reflect on a personal experience, but to “re/construct” their unique language identity.
SESSION 2 11:15 - 11:45
Breakout 1	The Emerging Professional Development Landscape for Foreign Language Instructors Simon Zuberek, (Columbia University) In the context of higher education, ongoing professional development is often perceived as a process done to the instructors, as opposed to being conducted for, with, and by them. The opportunity to contemplate, and ultimately challenge this criticism is perhaps one of the blessings brought by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This talk will discuss the previous five years of professional development initiatives for foreign language instructors at Columbia University. Much like any timeline is a collection of present moments, this presentation will highlight the more salient points of the Columbia Language Resource Center’s professional development programing. In so doing, it will examine the various initiatives in place prior to the pandemic, and show how they were first reconfigured, and ultimately redeveloped in the pandemic's wake. It will then survey the professional development landscape during the year of remote instruction, leading into the pandemic's current stage. The talk will conclude with a discussion of changes that took place in the last two years, and how they may shape professional development initiatives for, with, and by university-level foreign language faculty in the future.
Breakout 2	Inter-institutional initiatives: virtual exchange programs that promote intercultural communication competence Rosamaría León, (Yale University), Lourdes Sabé, (Yale University), María José Guardia, (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) This presentation will focus on achieving intercultural communication competence through virtual exchange programs. Based on an inter-institutional partnership between Yale University and a Peruvian University, participants will learn best practices for partnerships, as well as pedagogical and technological tools to support course objectives and activities focused on developing intercultural awareness skills.
Breakout 3	Comics in the language classroom, as a means to analyze and discuss various cultural, sociological and/or political topics Shiva Rahmani, (University of Chicago) Attendees would begin by working in pair work or small groups to first discuss what comics are, what topics normally are being discussed in comics, etc. Then in larger groups they would discuss what a good comic looks like and consists of. They would analyze differences and similarities among a selection of comics from a variety of subgenres. Then they analyze layout, page design and language being used in various comics. Finally, they will be shown how to create their own comics using a free online tool called Pixton to write an original narrative. This tool allows them to create comic strips. The comic will incorporate learned vocabulary, syntax and cultural components.
11:45 - 12:15	BREAK (optional networking in the Main Room)
SESSION 3 12:15-12:45
Breakout 1	The Evolving Language Classroom: A Semipermeable Membrane Christopher Kaiser, (Columbia University) This paper will discuss some of the changes that the COVID-19 pandemic will leave behind on the language classroom, as well as some of the ways in which language instructors can adapt to these changes.
Breakout 2	Virtual Exchange Platforms: Affordances and Shortcomings Maripaz Garcia, (Yale University) Presentation of an ongoing research study on the use of a virtual exchange platform (LinguaMeeting) with second-semester Spanish students. Data collected (fall 2021) includes six video recordings of the conversations and the corresponding written reflection assignments per student for a total of 54 participants. Preliminary conclusions will be discussed.
SESSION 4 12:50 - 1:20
Breakout 1	Virtual Reality in the Spanish and Portuguese language classrooms Juliano Saccomani, (The University of Chicago), Claudia Quevedo-Webb, (The University of Chicago) The Spanish and the Portuguese language programs at the University of Chicago have a backward-design approach, in which the courses are designed using the ACTFL proficiency standards as guidelines for the goals of each level. Using the flipped-model approach, students are exposed to the relevant content before class to allow for meaningful and significant use of class-time. The VR project aims at optimizing this approach by offering students an immersive experience in a guided learning environment.
Breakout 2	Collaborative Language Learning through the Metaverse Hee-Jeong Jeong, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) In the foreign language setting, students cannot experience real-life situations beyond the textbook and the classroom. Thus, this presentation provides a perspective on implementing situated learning through the metaverse and shares examples of how to involve students in virtual reality situations. The tool implemented for the class is Zepeto. Zepeto is the most popular and powerful 3D avatar platform in the metaverse world in Korea. Through their avatars, students can take advantage of these virtual activities to gain indirect experience of real-life situations they would face in Korea, collaborate with classmates, interact with other Korean speakers to broaden their understanding of Korean culture, internalize previously learned expressions and usages, actively engage in activities in Korean as active performers rather than remain in the role of passive learners, and use their translingual and transcultural competence in communication.
SESSION 5 1:25 - 1:55
Breakout 1	Promoting Students’ Active Reading through a Collaborative Annotation tool, Hypothes.is Meejeong Song, (Cornell University) In my presentation, I’d like to demonstrate how to utilize the digital texts to improve students’ active reading using the collaborative digital annotation tool, Hypothes.is, and share my practices in Advanced Korean class.
Breakout 2	Promoting asynchronous learning through task-based collaborative activities Ninghui Liang, (Yale University) This presentation will explore areas related to effective asynchronous learning, and share experience on the innovative design of task-based collaborative activities through technology in an attempt to increase student flexibility and interest while improving their language proficiency.
2:00 - 2:30
	Your Turn ... and Closing Remarks Question and discussion period