Enhancing Beginner-Level Foreign Language Education for Adult Learners

This book is an authoritative text that explores best classroom practices for engaging adult learners in beginner-level foreign language courses. Built around a diverse range of international research studies and conceptual articles, the book covers four key issues in teaching language to novice students: development of linguistic skills, communicative and intercultural competence, evaluation and assessment, and the use of technology. Each chapter includes teaching insights that are supported by critical research and can be practically applied across languages to enhance instructional strategies and curriculum designs. The text also aims to build intercultural competence, harness technology, and design assessment to stimulate effective learning in formal instructional settings, including colleges, universities, and specialist language schools. With its broad coverage of language pedagogy at the novice level, this book is a must read for graduate students, scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of language education, second language acquisition, language teaching and learning, and applied linguistics.

Ekaterina Nemtchinova is Professor of Linguistics at Seattle Pacific University, USA, where she was named "Professor of the Year" in 2018. Her research interests include teacher education and technology in language teaching. She has previously authored a number of articles and textbooks in these areas.

Foreword by Benjamin Rifkin Acknowledgments List of contributors 1. Introduction: Enhancing beginner-level foreign language education for adult learners Ekaterina Nemtchinova Part I: Teaching Language Competence 2. Postsecondary language learners' ideal L2 self in a beginning Chinese, French, and Spanish classrooms Yan Xie and Laura Ziebart 3. Experience with application of usage-based model of language to beginning L2 instruction Serafima Gettys 4. Enhancing grammar acquisition among beginner-level learners of Chinese using the flipped learning model Hongying Xu 5. Building beginning Spanish language learners' linguistic and cultural competence through online task-based instruction Lina Lee Part II: Teaching Intercultural Competence 6. Integrating culture in language curriculum from beginning to intermediate level in a blended learning environment: A design-based empirical study Shenglan Zhang 7. Intercultural competence in elementary-level language classes in higher education Islam Karkour 8. The culture portfolio: Assessing growth toward intercultural competence Julianne Bryant 9. Employing concept maps in teaching foreign language culture Elmira Gerfanova Part III: Teaching with Technology 10. Pathways to digital L2 literacies for text-based telecollaboration at the beginning level Maria Bondarenko and Liudmila Klimanova 11. Student satisfaction and engagement in a beginning Ukrainian blended-learning course: Debunking fears of blending and lessons learned Alla Nedashkivska 12. Data-driven learning in a low-level language classroom Katya Goussakova 13. -------! Training Russian prefixed verbs of motion in virtual reality Kristin Bidoshi and Ekaterina Nemtchinova Part IV: Assessment and Evaluation 14. An exploration of beginner-level Korean learners' perceptions and participation in collaborative writing tasks for learning-oriented assessment Yunjung Nam and Hakyoon Lee 15. Feminist assessment in elementary world language courses Veta Chitnev 16. Assessment of the relationship between derivational morphological awareness and second language reading comprehension Anna Shur