top of page

Challenging dominant norms in language teaching

1st roundtable

Moving away from ethnocentrism and linguistic hegemonies: two examples of module content

Dr. Elena Minelli, Lecturer in Italian and Translation Studies and Year Abroad Officer for Italian. Her areas of interest are comparative linguistics, gender, translation studies and teaching practice that fosters interdisciplinarity, inclusion and self-awareness.

​

Dr. Irene Macías, Senior Lecturer in Spanish Language and Linguistics, and co-founder of LanGW4. Her areas of interest and research comprise effective pedagogies, critical language study and Spanish as a foreign language.

​

The decolonization of the curriculum is one of the drivers of the current Curriculum Transformation taking place at the Department of PoLIS, University of Bath. This presentation will focus on two initiatives carried out in Italian and Spanish this academic year.

We will firstly describe the content introduced in the Italian syllabus. In June 2021 E. Minelli attended the 5-day online Summer School Teaching Black Italy. The seminars and workshops explored the systemic issues that still cause of discrimination in Italy nowadays. From the Italian Renaissance, through the colonialism of XIX and XX century, to the current political resistance of Italian conservative parties to grant citizenship to children of migrant descent born in Italy, the ‘Invisibility of Blackness’ has been a constant reality. Since racial prejudice is a palpable reality that even our students have noticed in their Year Abroad, we decided to include the topic of Italian Afro-descendants in the syllabi of year 2, prior to the YA, and year 4, as a debrief when they return from Italy.

We will then talk about the design of teaching materials that avoid linguistic hegemonies through the example of a recent publication of Advanced Spanish, Reading the Spanish-Speaking World (Macías Fernández, I. & Pountain, C., 2022, Routledge. In press). This book has been the basis for a final year language module, and it is part of a growing trend that places pan-Hispanism and dialectal variation at the heart of Spanish language teaching.

We would like to finish with some reflective questions on the possibilities, and limitations, we have in our material, situated realities as language scholars.

Minelli_Macias.JPG

Bringing non-dominant voices and alternative discourses to language classes through the use of films: Adú and Roma in the Spanish classroom

Beatriz Rubio Arribas is a Lecturer in Spanish at Cardiff University. She is currently the Year Abroad Coordinator for the Spanish Department. She also co-authored two books aimed at primary school pupils, ¡Es Español! and Juguemos Todos Juntos.  She has presented papers at various conferences, including ELE in Eirinn and ELE-UK.


Ester Borin-Bonillo is a Spanish Teacher at Cardiff University.  She completed her MA in Catalan and Spanish as second Language from Girona University. She is an experienced teacher of Spanish and Catalan as a foreign language for Adults and Higher Education and her more recent publications were at ELE-UK and ASELE.

​

In this presentation it will be shown how the Spanish Department at Cardiff University has introduced the use of the films Adú and Roma as an educational and formative learning tool for students in the generic final year Spanish language module.

 

The presentation will show the use of these two films to promote and reclaim knowledge that has been hidden or marginalised in the language classroom before, and the difficulties and challenges found during the process. This has been made possible by showcasing different corpus of the Spanish language as well as tasks and discussions that allow us to rethink and reframe popular imaginary and perspectives with the aim to create a more diverse and inclusive module and learning experience.

We will provide a short description of the use of these two films in the classroom, along with the activities and didactic approaches. We will also offer examples of students’ engagement and tasks proposed, which were aimed to empower our students by creating spaces and resources for dialogue and to challenge mainstream views. “Decolonisation asks us to consider how the location and identity of an author shape their perspective. Designing modules entail narrating stories and we need to reflect more critically on how these stories are told. Which actors are privileged and placed at the centre? Whose voices are authoritative and considered as part of the canon while others are left at the margins? (Muldoon, James 2019).  

Borin_Rubio.JPG
1st roundtable: Speakers
bottom of page