CANCELLED French Language Education in the Context of Multicultural Study Abroad

Guest speaker Dr. Julie Robert, a Senior Lecturer at the School of International Studies, University of Technology Sydney, will present on Tuesday, September 20 at 4 PM in the Institute for the Humanities Osterman Common Room, 1022 Thayer Building.

In the field of foreign language teaching, ideology and practicality are often thought of as competing tensions, where pragmatic concerns tend to win out over ideological positions. Serving the ultra pragmatic needs for teaching everyday conversational 'survival skills’ for multiple study abroad locations nonetheless reorients the debates around ideology and pragmatism. This talk uses the teaching of French to prepare students to study abroad in three different national contexts to tease out the role of ideology in what we so often consider the practical and applied field of language teaching.

For more information, contact Jarrod Hayes at hayesj@umich.edu. Sponsored by Romance Languages and Literatures and co-sponsored by the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, the Institute for the Humanities, and the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies.