Description: This interactive workshop will include demonstrations, debriefing, and time to try and practice three instructional activities using materials made by language communities (aka, authentic resources). The comprehension-based teaching strategies are Picture Talk, modified MovieTalk, and Calendar Talk.

We’ll begin with a demonstration of Picture Talk in Thai, designed for complete beginners. We’ll debrief and discuss how to adapt Picture Talk to your classrooms & students. We’ll proceed to a modified version of MovieTalk, and close with Calendar Talk. Throughout, we’ll also break down the micro skills that help students understand new language and offer them opportunities to add to the discussion at any proficiency level.

Objectives: 

• Participants will expand their instructional strategies for using authentic resources for highly comprehensible interaction with any proficiency level of students;
• Participants will expand their techniques to support students’ comprehension of target language;
• Participants will expand their techniques for inviting students to contribute to and shape discussions by using and responding to use of the target language, at any proficiency level.

Diane Neubauer, 杜雁子, taught Mandarin Chinese for 10 years in elementary, middle, and high schools in the US before completing her PhD in Foreign Language and ESL Education at the University of Iowa in 2022. She now teaches Chinese online, facilitates language teacher training, and teaches part time at University of Iowa and Arizona State. She previously served as an officer in ACTFL’s Comprehension-based Communicative Language Teaching special interest group. She is especially interested in how language teachers can facilitate students’ comprehension of target language, engagement in classroom learning, & development of intercultural competence. Check her YouTube channel for Chinese language learners & teachers (sometimes featuring her flock of backyard chickens!) and her new website.