Invited Speakers

Plenary Speaker: Julio C. Rodriguez, University of Hawaii at Manoa

JULIO C. RODRIGUEZ is director of the Center for Language & Technology at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and two sponsored programs: the Hawai'i National Foreign Language Resource Center (U.S. Department of Education) and the Language Flagship Technology Innovation Center (Defense Language & National Security Education Office, U.S. Department of Defense). He has over 25 years of experience in instructional design and technology integration into teaching and learning. Within the broad area of instructional technology, he is primarily focused on faculty development programs, project-based learning, materials development, and online course design. Dr. Rodriguez has led and participated in over 20 grant-funded projects to develop online materials including an award-winning online course. He is currently leading the implementation of professional learning programs for language instructors, such as a national project to create professional development for online foreign language teachers, the creation of interactive materials for student and faculty orientation to online instruction, the implementation of quality improvement activities for online courses, as well as the incorporation of electronic instructional tools that enable project-based learning into online learning and faculty development contexts. He has published and presented extensively on instructional technology. Prior to his position at the University of Hawai'i, Dr. Rodriguez was curriculum development director for online courses at Iowa State University, where he supervised a team of instructional and graphic designers and was responsible for a portfolio of over 100 online courses, including a TESL Certificate Program.

Designing Interaction for Online Learning (1:15 - 2:30 pm (PDT), Thursday, June 24)

The design of interaction is one of the greatest challenges in the creation of quality online courses, and is arguably one of the aspects of online learning that can best inform, enrich, and enhance the design of language learning experiences. The importance of interaction design became more evident and gained much deserved attention when instruction moved online. In a post-pandemic world, the hope is that the richness and variety of interaction that digital learning environments afford will not be simply discontinued or simplified, but rather leveraged to maximize opportunities for language learning.
Guided by research in distance learning, I will approach the design of interaction in online courses from a macro (course) level perspective and examine distinct interaction types that place the learner at the center of the activity, namely learner-instructor, learner-materials, learner-learner, and learner–community-of-practice interaction. In the examination of those interaction types, I will consider the relevant research and best practices in the field to provide recommendations for implementation.

Keynote Speaker: Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University

LOURDES ORTEGA is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. She is best known for an award-winning meta-analysis of second language instruction published in 2000, a best-seller graduate-level textbook Understanding Second Language Acquisition (Routledge 2009, translated into Mandarin in 2016), and since 2010 for championing a bilingual and social justice turn in her field of second language acquisition. Recent articles have appeared in CALICO Journal (2017), World Englishes (2018), Modern Language Journal (2019), and Language Learning (2020). Her latest book is The Cambridge Handbook of Bilingualism (co-edited in 2019 with Annick De Houwer). She is the General Editor of Language Learning. Originally from southern Spain, Lourdes lived and worked as a language teacher in Greece for most of her 20s. She has lived in the United States since 1993 and has mentored teachers and researchers in Hawai‘i, Arizona, Georgia, and currently in Washington DC.

Teaching World Languages in the 21st Century: Reciprocal Insights from SLA and Korean Language Education
(1 - 2:15 pm (PDT), Friday, June 25)

The pre- and post-pandemic world realities of the 21^st century are transforming disciplinary understandings of “good” language teaching and “successful” language learning. They are also complicating the work of world language teachers, who often must defend the value of multilingualism in an English-dominant country like the United States. In this talk I consider key contemporary challenges in the teaching and learning of world languages, examining for each how second language acquisition (SLA) insights have enriched the field of Korean language education and, in turn, how Korean language educators have contributed unique insights for SLA with their cutting-edge work in the teaching and learning of Korean. The themes are: the balance between form and meaning in traditional and digital modes of teaching, the ambivalent role of authentic materials and native speaker models, new understandings of multilingual outcomes, and strategies that boost student motivation and linguistic confidence. Across the four areas, I select examples from the two fields of Korean education and SLA in order to show that we must understand not only the how’s of language teaching but also the why’s. I also pose some questions for the future which I believe AATK members are well positioned to address as they continue to promote Korean learning and multilingualism in the U.S.