Dr. Jean Schultz, the French language program director at UC Santa Barbara, will give the talk “Implementing an Ecological Interdisciplinary Approach to Language Teaching: Biological Topics in French” on Tuesday, February 27 at 4 pm in ED 1217. The talk, sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Emphasis in Applied Linguistics, is free and open to the public.
Teachers have long been encouraged to take an interdisciplinary approach to foreign language instruction. However, the implementation of such approaches has remained an ideal rather than a reality in the majority of college-level language classrooms. This talk will explore some of the issues involved in actualizing interdisciplinary approaches to language teaching, as well as focusing on the benefits of an ecological pedagogical approach for successful implementation. This talk will draw on the experience of UCSB’s experimental French 10, “Biological Topics in French” course to illustrate the various learning objectives and language acquisition results of an ecological interdisciplinary approach to language teaching.
Jean Marie Schultz earned her doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, where she also served as director of the intermediate French language program. She is currently the French language program director at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her research interests include second language acquisition theory and foreign language literacy. In addition to co-authoring the intermediate-level French textbook Réseau, she has published articles in the Modern Language Journal, French Review, and AAUSC. She has also contributed refereed chapters to a number of books on Applied Linguistics. In 2017 she was given the French government honorary title Chevalier des Palmes Académiques for her contributions to the dissemination of French language and culture.