Bridging Theory and Practice in the Foreign language Classroom
Emily Scida, Spanish, Italian & Portuguese
2005 TTI Fellow
In many pedagogy courses, novice teachers are encouraged to apply new theories and methodologies to their own classroom teaching experiences, in order to build up a repertoire of teaching techniques and explore ways to make learning more effective and engaging. Most teachers find it more helpful to observe new teaching techniques and use of course materials first before applying these in their own teaching. My project seeks to bridge theory and practice with the creation of an archive of videotaped segments of experienced language teachers in action which will then become a central part of a course website to be used in SPAN 821: Practicum in Teaching. These digitized video clips will be used together with other technologies such as Powerpoint, weblinks, audio clips, as well as texts and classroom materials, to form the units covered in the course. These video clips, materials, and resources will be available on our course E-folio website and will serve as models for the development by GTAs of their own teaching portfolios of course materials which they will use in their language teaching.