EVENT DETAILS

Less and Less Foreign: Teaching the Romance Languages through Intercomprehension

Presented by: Clorinda Donato & Cedric Oliva

California State University, Long Beach

Globalization, immigration, media, virtual landscapes, mobility and migration have transformed the contexts in which we teach language today, as well as the students we teach. Increasingly multilingual and multicultural, our students enter the language classroom with untapped linguistic
and cultural resources. This presentation will report on how Intercomprehension, a method for teaching languages of the same family through the linguistic bridges that unite them, has proven to be a dynamic tool for rethinking language teaching for these students and for reshaping the
content we teach them. Since 2007, we have been offering courses at California State University, Long Beach taught from an intercomprehensive perspective. Known as “French and Italian for Spanish Speakers,” these courses have shortened acquisition times while bringing our students
closer to languages and to their own capacity for learning them, resulting in a perception of world languages that is less and less foreign and more and more familiar.

Clorinda Donato is the George L. Graziadio Chair of Italian Studies at California State University, Long Beach, Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques and Professor of French and Italian. She is the Principal Investigator for the three-year NEH grant, "French and Italian for Spanish Speakers".

Cedric Joseph Oliva is the Language Coordinator for the department of Romance, German, Russian, Languages and Literatures and teaches
French and Italian for Spanish Speakers as well as Intercomprehension at California State University, Long Beach. He received an interdisciplinary Ph.D. specializing in language studies with a focus on the case of functional intercomprehension in Corsica.