Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High-Leverage Teaching Practices

Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High-Leverage Teaching Practices, Vol. 1 presents an approach to teacher education and professional development that emphasizes carefully deconstructing fundamental instructional practices that are complex and often not visible through observation, definition, or brief explanation. Its goal is to assist teachers in learning how to enact specific practices, referred to as high-leverage teaching practices, deemed essential to foreign language teaching and situated in theory and research.

Six practices are presented:

Facilitating Target Language ComprehensibilityBuilding a Classroom Discourse CommunityGuiding Learners to Interpret and Discuss Authentic TextsFocusing on Form in a Dialogic Context Through PACEFocusing on Cultural Products, Practices, and Perspectives in a Dialogic ContextProviding Oral Corrective Feedback to Improve Learner Performance

Unique features of the book include deconstruction of each practice, activities for rehearsing the practices, rubrics for assessing performance, tools to assist teachers in enacting the practices, and discussion of how each practice relates to larger educational issues.

Eileen W. Glisan is Distinguished University Professor of Spanish at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she coordinates the Spanish Education K-12 Program. President of ACTFL in 2010, she is co-author of Teacher’ s Handbook: Contextualized Language Instruction, currently in its fifth edition, and of the 2013 text, Implementing Integrated Performance Assessment. She received the 1996 Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education and the 2008 Northeast Conference Nelson H. Brooks Award for Distinguished Service and Leadership to the Profession. Richard Donato is Professor and Chair of the Department of Instruction and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. His research earned him the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages/Modern Language Journal Paul Pimsleur research award (1997 and 2006) and the Northeast Conference Freeman Award (2004). In 2016, he was awarded the University of Pittsburgh Provost’ s award for research mentoring. He is the co-author of the book A Tale of Two Schools: Developing Sustainable Early Language Programs.