CLA-OIT and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese are pleased to invite you to a Brown Bag Presentation and Discussion with Dr. Steven L. Thorne entitled: Power genres and digital vernaculars: A pedagogy of language awareness and practical engagement
Location: 140 Nolte Center
Date & Time: Monday, May 5, 2008 12:00-1:30 (Feel free to bring your lunch!)
Professor Thorne will present (see abstract below) and then we will then open the floor for discussion, brainstorming, and idea sharing.
Abstract: This presentation describes a broad pedagogical research
program aimed at heightening language awareness among students and
revitalizing university-level course work in language-related fields
(English, foreign languages, rhetoric, and written expression across
a variety of disciplines), and more broadly, to language learning and
use across contexts and the lifespan. The discussion begins by
establishing the need for language and genre-focused activities that
attend to the shifting social practices and emerging literacies
associated with digital media. I will then describe a pedagogical
model called "bridging activities" that involves guided exploration
and analysis of student selected or created digital vernacular texts
originating in Web 2.0 and other technologies/practices (e.g.,
instant messaging and synchronous chat, blogs and wikis, remixing,
and multiplayer online gaming). The bridging activities approach is
designed to enhance educational engagement and relevance through the
incorporation of students' digital-vernacular expertise, experience,
and/or curiosity, coupled together with instructor guidance at the
level of semiotic form to explore interactional features, discourse-
level grammar, and genre. The ultimate goal is to foster critical
awareness of the anatomy and functional organization of a wide range
of communicative practices relating to both digital and analogue
textual conventions.
Biography: Steven L. Thorne is an Assistant Professor in the
department of Applied Linguistics and Associate Director of the
Center for Language Acquisition at the Pennsylvania State University.
He also serves as the Advisor for Mediated Learning at the Center for
Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research (a national
foreign language resource center). His research focuses on cultural
historical activity theory, computer-assisted language learning, new
media literacies, second language acquisition, and themes relating to
social theory and critical pedagogy. His research has appeared in
numerous edited collections as well as the Handbook of New
Literacies, Encyclopedia of Language and Education, and the Modern
Language Journal, Language Learning & Technology, Annual Review of
Applied Linguistics, CALICO Journal, and Intelligence, among other
venues. His book length works include a co-edited volume on Internet-
mediated Intercultural Foreign Language Education (Thomson/Heinle,
2006) and the co-authored monograph Sociocultural Theory and the
Genesis of Second Language Development (Oxford University Press, 2006).
