experiential Module

Experiential Module (EM) Description - What and Why

In the summer of 2022, I organized an in-person, four-day language and culture summer camp for a group of young novice-low Japanese language learners in a private language school setting. The participants were both heritage language (HL) and non-HL learners, and their ages ranged from five to ten. Each lesson consisted of 180 minutes of language and (inter)cultural activities with three basic components: language games that bring together previously and newly learned vocabulary, craft, and food-making activities to explore cultural products and practices.

While I included a variety of activities and instructional materials, one of the most important aspects of my design was differentiated instruction (DI) (Garton & Copland, 2018) and task scaffolding. Culture-oriented activities were designed to explicitly introduce communication and language use in authentic contexts that are directly relevant to children’s socio-cultural experiences (i.e., school lunch, summer activities with family) yet different enough to raise their curiosity and awareness of self and otherness. Observable learning goals that were measurable by the standards (NCSSFL-ACTFL, 2017) were first set for each lesson to shape activities and task sequences through backward designing. 

There are several reasons to make Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL) learning accessible to local (especially young) populations. One possible long-term benefit is to remedy the low level of current enrollments at the tertiary level. While these teaching contexts may not seem relevant to one another, I believe starting early is the key and local LCTL teachers can make a difference to draw connection between the two.