Designing World Language Curriculum for Intercultural Communicative Competence - (Bloomsbury Guidebooks for Language Teachers) by Jennifer Eddy

Book Synopsis

This book creatively redefines how teacher educators and faculty in secondary and post-secondary language education can become designers with intercultural education in mind. The author aligns theoretical frameworks with practical features for revising the modern language curriculum via themes and novel tasks that transfer language learning from classroom to community, developing communicative competence for mediation and learner autonomy along the way.
For novice and experienced instructors alike, this book empowers them to:
- design curriculum from transferable concepts that are worthy of understanding and have value within the culture(s) and to the learner;
- develop assessments that ask the learner to solve problems, and create products that transfer concepts or address needs of various audiences that they will encounter in community, life, and work;
- direct language learners through a spiral, articulated program that supports academic, career and personal goals.

Pedagogical features include a glossary of key terms, research-to-practice boxes, scaffolded design tasks, reflection questions and template samples representing language exemplars from the following languages and cultures: Arabic, Chinese, Èdè Yorùbá, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Ladino, Nahuatl, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Te Reo Maori and Urdu. The accompanying online resources offer blank templates, PowerPoints and guides for designing bespoke curricula with key performance assessments.

Review Quotes

A must-read for any practitioner wishing to implement a curriculum based on Byram's ICC model. Extensively researched and grounded in best practices, Eddy takes teachers beyond the basics to help them design meaningful activities addressing ever-relevant issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice in manageable and impactful ways.
Gay Rawson, Professor and Chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Concordia College, USA

Examines how language teachers can design an innovative and intercultural curriculum, whilst making language and culture become alive through performance assessment tasks. The book provides a plethora of creative and bespoke examples for transfer in the classroom and beyond, allowing students to truly engage in deeper learning and understanding with the language and culture they are studying. The book is full of practical examples that are very easily accessible.
Fotini Diamantidaki, Associate Professor of Languages Education and Applied Linguistics, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK

Jennifer Eddy's highly original book provides teachers on both sides of the Atlantic with a design framework and a rich array of creative tasks with which, individually and collaboratively, to bridge the all too frequent gap between language learning and communicative language use that engages with real-world cultural issues.

David Little, Professor, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

About the Author

Jennifer Eddy is Associate Professor and Program Director of World Language Education at Queens College, City University of New York, USA, and directs professional development initiatives for schools and universities on curriculum and performance assessment design.