Pixel International Conferences

Research overwhelming demonstrates that students learn, comprehend, and retain concepts much more effectively by actively participating in lessons rather than by passively absorbing them. The conversion of lessons into meaningful and relevant community engagement projects offers students experiences that start them on a journey toward linguistic excellence and multicultural competency. The more students understand a community with whom they are engaging, the more they will want to become immersed in that community, speak their language, eat their food, enjoy their music, and more importantly, befriend, understand, and respect the people within that community. Navigating successfully through the projects helps students acquire important leadership skills while becoming linguistically competent and globally minded. In an era where diversity and cultural understanding is critical, it is incumbent upon language professors to go beyond the signifiers of the vocabulary and the grammar and immerse students in situations they will experience in real life. Language professors should ask themselves this question, “Will my students remember the vocabulary and the grammar taught to them from a textbook and a chalkboard or will they remember the satisfaction they felt at being able to employ the class content in the resolution of a real-life problem?” This paper will help answer that question by highlighting three major community-based language projects created at Penn State Berks. It will illustrate how the connections between course content and projects are made and how the outcomes of those projects help to continuously mold language instruction on our campus. It will conclude by demonstrating how those projects were adapted and converted to virtual opportunities when the world was suddenly confronted with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Keywords: enhancing student engagement, project-based learning.

References:

• Barreneche, Gabriel Ignacio, and Héctor Ramos-Flores. “Integrated or Isolated Experiences? Considering the Role of Service-Learning in the Spanish Language Curriculum.” Hispania 96, no. 2 (2013): 215-228.
• Parra, Maria Luisa. “Expanding Language and Cultural Competence in Advanced Heritage- and ForeignLanguage Learners through Community Engagement  and Work with the Arts.” Heritage Language Journal, 10(2) (Fall, 2013): 115-142.
• Toohey, Kelleen, and Elaine Day.” Language-Learning: The Importance of Access to Community.” TESL Canada Journaurevue TESL Du Canada Vol. 17, No.1, (Winter 1999): 40-53