2021 Heritage Language Symposium
The Center for Global Studies has been proud to sponsor the UW STARTALK Heritage Language Symposium, an annual gathering of language teaching colleagues from the University of Washington and around the state for the purpose of discussing heritage language learning.
We invite you to join language teaching colleagues from the University of Washington and around the state for our seventh symposium on working with heritage language learners. Learn more below.
2021 Heritage Language Symposium
- Live keynote and panel presentations on Saturday, February 20, 2021, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm (Pacific Time)
- Informal Lunchtime Networking, 12:00 – 12:30 pm (Pacific Time)
- No cost to attend
- + 3 (or more) Free Clock Hours for WAFLT members
In addition to the live keynote and panel presentations on February 20th, we will be offering a curated list of links to pre-recorded, highly engaging, and relevant presentations on Heritage Language Learning and Teaching that will be available the week before the Symposium for participants to view in advance and discuss at the Symposium.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Olesya Kisselev, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the University of Texas San Antonio.
Dr. Kisselev’s research focuses on Second Language Acquisition, Heritage Language, Bilingualism, Corpus Linguistics, and Learner Corpus Linguistics. In 2019, she coauthored a new textbook with Irina Dubinina, Rodnaya rech’: An Introductory Course for Heritage Learners of Russian.
PANEL: Teaching heritage language learners across K12 and higher education during Covid-19: strategies for mixed classes
- Ana Fernández Dobao, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Washington (moderator)
- Nathan Marks, Doctoral Candidate, Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Washington
- Sabrina Spannagel, Associate Teaching Professor, Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Washington
- Jingwen (Vivian) Li, Mandarin Dual Language Immersion teacher, Mercer International Middle School, Seattle
Although teachers and researchers agree that heritage language learners are better served in separate courses specifically designed to address their affective and linguistic needs, in the United States most heritage speakers study their home language in mixed classes, alongside second language learners (Beaudrie 2012, Carreira 2014). Meeting the needs of heritage language learners in these mixed classes represents a major challenge for teachers at all levels. In this roundtable, we will (1) discuss some of the difficulties we have encountered in our mixed classes, particularly while adjusting to remote teaching during Covid-19 (2) share the strategies and best practices that have worked for our heritage language learners in both face-to-face and online learning contexts, and (3) open a dialogue across languages and academic levels by inviting other teachers in the public to share their own strategies and experiences.