Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

L2 Journal

L2 Journal bannerUC Berkeley

About

The L2 Journal is an open access, fully refereed, interdisciplinary journal which aims to promote the research and the practice of language learning and teaching. It publishes articles in English on all aspects of applied linguistics broadly conceived, i.e., second language acquisition, second language pedagogy, bilingualism and multilingualism, language and technology, curriculum development and teacher training, testing and evaluation.

Articles

Creating Social Justice Instructional Templates: Frameworks, Process, and Lessons Learned

Although social justice and related critical pedagogies are rapidly growing areas of interest in language education, instructional materials for use across languages and levels and published as free and adaptable Open Educational Resources (OERs) are lacking. The purpose of this article is to describe the frameworks, process, and lessons learned related to the creation of three instructional planning templates that support social justice in language education and scaffold implementation of multiliteracies and social justice pedagogies. After defining social justice, the article summarizes the frameworks that inform the instructional templates, describes the process of creating, piloting, and revising the templates, and identifies the affordances and constraints discovered through this process.

‘Teaching English as service’ in Spanish language programs: A Translanguaging approach

Abstract

In the context of Spanish language programs, service-learning provides authentic experiences to use the target language while working with the Latino community. However, in many cases the language competencies needed to work in the community do not always involve an exclusive use of the target language. This is the case of service-learning programs in which students teach English as a Second Language (ESL) to adults or children. This study presents a ‘translanguaging pedagogy’ in which tutoring sessions are planned around the use of both languages to teach and learn. Using a Critical Language Awareness pedagogy academic content covered in the course examines the language experiences of adult ESL immigrants through. This study advocates framing target language use in service-learning as a “communicative performance” with the aim of shifting notions of monolingual language practices and integrate new conceptions about real-life communicative practices in service-learning.

Teachers' Forum

Returning to the Classroom: an Autoethnography

The following is an autoethnographic description of my participation, as a late-career French professor, in a summer language immersion class in Spain. My initial intention was to improve my Spanish and to assess how I responded to communicative pedagogy. I soon realized, however, that it was more intriguing to explore my L3 and professional identities, as well as the affective consequences of my experience.