Developing Competence and Critical Thinking with Activities Based on the Literacy Approach
This contribution will explore how to develop students' communicative, socio cultural and intercultural competence in Italian by fostering advanced level discourse that spans across disciplines. This can be achieved by engaging students through targeted tasks starting at the beginner level of the language sequence and spanning through the upper division thematic courses. In particular, the essay will illustrate practical ways in which beginner and intermediate courses and advanced composition courses can be used to promote the development of literacy, proficiency, engagement and motivation in a foreign language, particularly in the Italian as a second language (ILS) context. The paper offers examples of activities that strive to develop literacy as defined by Kern (2000) that are geared towards fostering students' critical thinking and analytical skills at all levels. Activities were created by the author of this article using multiple texts from varied contexts to promote language learning and competence beyond the surface level. The examples will also show how to easily update a lesson, a unit or a course by choosing departure materials that span across disciplines and themes, thus engaging students to inter relate those themes in an unconventional unique manner and move towards the more substantial topics that relate to current events or tropes. Although the offered examples come from lower division language courses, they can also be effectively applied to any upper division course where there is the need to update and modernize the curriculum also through the integration of materials drawn from multimedia environments and the application of basic userfriendly multimedia technology tools. This contribution was initially presented at the "Italian as Communication and Literacy" conference held at Rutgers in January 2017. 3 LTT, Issue I, Dec. 2018 Introduction In the field of foreign languages there has recently been a rethinking of pedagogical practices due to the current situation in modern languages, characterized by a significant drop in student enrollment, a discrepancy between the foreign language courses completed by students and their proficiency stage in the given language. On an administrative level, there is the need to cater to, recruit and motivate students from other disciplines and to show the relevance of foreign languages in a university environment which fosters practical skills immediately applicable to the specializations and future jobs of students. Several reports have documented the above mentioned situation. The first, written by the Modern Language Association, is centered on foreign language pedagogy (MLA "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" and the second, written by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, is geared towards the skills that foreign language study must foster (ACTFL "21st Century Skills Map" Both reports emphasize that the focus on communicative competence the most widely practiced and still popular within foreign language courses is no longer sufficient and foreign language learning must therefore move beyond this competence as students must also acquire those skills that are necessary for and applicable to the practical situations of contemporary society. For example, according to the first report, the goal of language learning should be to reach translingual and transcultural competence, meaning to be able to "function as informed and capable interlocutors with educated native speakers in the target language" (MLA "Foreign Languages" 3 4) This means to not only be proficient in the language but also to understand the background context of situations as well as the relationships and influences between each sector of the society that language is spoken in. The second report, expands on this concept by placing emphasis on developing global awareness and on the importance of understanding "the perspectives on the world that speakers of other languages bring to the table" (ACTFL "21st" 5) The report proceeds with analyzing how this concept affects each of the skills that they identify as twenty first century skills. The recommendations contained in the above reports also stem from the realization that at the end of their foreign language studies, students do not possess the competence and proficiency that is proper to the degree of language studies completed. There are two major reference frameworks for measuring foreign language proficiency: the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (2001) mostly followed in the United States but also known on the international level and the QCER (Quadro Comune Europeo di Riferimento, 2001) mostly followed in Europe. The principles that inform current foreign language pedagogy take into account these frameworks when developing curricula, courses, exams and materials. For example, a learner who has completed a path of studies structured around the principles necessary to achieve the classification of "advanced low" in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines should in fact possess the competences appropriate to that benchmark. However, it has become clear through the concepts of the two mentioned reports, information relayed at workshops and through classroom observations that students do not in fact achieve the level of competence which corresponds to the degree of language studies completed. Following the previously mentioned reports, therefore, there emerges the need for language departments to give students the tools to apply skills learned in their language courses to everyday socio cultural situations as well as to their life and disciplines. The same MLA association report had encouraged to perform a change in the teaching and learning of foreign 4 LTT, Issue I, Dec. 2018 languages, whose pedagogical methods no longer seem to satisfy neither the needs nor the requests of learners. The MLA committee emphasized that "As recent world events have demonstrated, deep cultural knowledge and linguistic competence are equally necessary if one wishes to understand people and their communities." (MLA, "Foreign languages" 2) mirroring a prior observation about academic language teaching in which Kern stated that "Preparing students to communicate in multiple cultural contexts, both at home and abroad, means sensitizing them to discourse practices in other societies and to the ways those discourse practices both reflect and create cultural norms. (Kern, "Literacy" 2) There is the need to change the language curriculum so that the learning that happens in language classes can actually span across disciplines rather than be confined to one single area or topic such as, for example, literature, business or film studies. Therefore, languages need to educate students to acquire a broader set of cross disciplinary competences. The concept of literacy as defined by Richard Kern in 2000 seems poised to fill this role. In brief, it consists in the ability to create meaning that is appropriate to given socio cultural contexts of any given culture in question through critical thinking and advanced level discourse. According to Kern, such ability can be promoted already from the beginning level and throughout the various levels of foreign language study because it can be developed in a way that is appropriate to each stage of learning: "A literacy based approach, I argue, can help to break down lines of division and assure intellectual stimulation even at the beginning stages of language learning" "Literacy" 8) This concept is of fundamental importance since it represents the departure point to try to offer a solution to the problem of the discrepancy between level of courses completed and level of proficiency and competence acquired. As illustrated in the figure I have created (Figure 1) literacy can help to make the liaison between the processes that takes place during classroom learning, the practical application of the content learned and, via its principle of the juxtaposition of multiple texts, the cross disciplinarity of language learning. As far as the Italian context, there is still little research on this embodiment of the concept. In particular, there is no official Italian translation of literacy as defined by Kern and no research on his concept has been published in Italian. This might be due to the fact that in literacy studies research there persists "a definition of literacy that is in constant evolution, seen through multiple perspectives, disciplines and research traditions" (Banzato: 135) In fact, articles relating to Italian and literacy, generally tend to focus on predecessors of the concept such as multiliteracies or to literacy studies, which originated from disciplines other than the field of foreign languages and that are generally centered on the first exposure to learning to read and write in one's mother tongue. In addition, parallel research studies pertaining to Italian such as 1 original: "una definizione in continua evoluzione di literacy, in base ai dati piu recenti che emergono costantemente, attraverso molteplici prospettive, discipline e tradizioni di ricerca." (Banzato 135) 2 term used by the New London Group in their 1994 meeting to discuss a pedagogy centered on mutiple modes of meaning making. 5 LTT, Issue I, Dec. 2018 those by Balboni, Pichiassi or Ardizzone do not appear to be as comprehensive: they tend to focus on single abilities or competences. Within the English context, there is a long tradition of studies on literacy. However, respectable research articles published in English on literacy studies, such as those by Kinzer or Gee tend to equate the concept of literacy with that of "alphabetization" (in Italian "alfabetizzazione" i.e. the opposition between being literate "istruito/alfabeta" or illiterate "analfabeta" Other research studies such as those by Murray tend to focus on single competences, such as digital literacy or s