The Department of Romance and Classical Studies is thrilled to host Dr. Marta González-Lloret on October 19, 4pm for a virtual talk on technology and L2 learning during and post-pandemic. Dr. González-Lloret is a Professor in the Department of Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas (LLEA) at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa. Her main areas of interest are the intersections of technology and TBLT (Task-based Language Teaching) and technology and L2 pragmatics. She teaches courses on Spanish language, linguistics, second language acquisition, teacher training, and Computer assisted language learning (CALL).

Please see an abstract for the talk below. We welcome all to attend this talk, especially language educators, and we hope to see you there! Please email Leonardo Guédez at guedezle@msu.edu for the Zoom link and share within your networks!

Abstract

Although the entire planet was pushed to move education online last year, much of it was unplanned and not very successful. We saw those months of emergency teaching as a way of keeping students engaged in education, but we did not focus on the possibilities that the technology offered to provide effective and high-quality language education. As most educational institutions get back to some type of mask-to-mask L2 classes, it is the best time to reflect on the lessons learned and think of what technologies can not only mediate, but actually enhance, our L2 teaching. This presentation will propose some technologies that have proved effective for L2 learning and can be used with online models of teaching or as part of face-to-face language education. It will also reflect on some of the challenges of the last few months and how they can be overcome (or avoided). The follow-up workshop will focus on developing well-designed tasks using some of the proposed technologies.