Papers by Alessia Valfredini
Traditionally viewed as value-free commercial commodities, language coursebooks are cultural cons... more Traditionally viewed as value-free commercial commodities, language coursebooks are cultural constructs shaped by dominant discourses, commercial interests, pedagogical trends, ethical concerns, and larger political issues (Canale, 2016; Gray, 2002, 2013) and play a critical role in institutionalizing certain views of the world as representational samples of objective truths (Meyer & Rosenblatt, 1987). The present study examines a sample of learning units in popular firstyear textbooks of Italian produced in the United States and designed for use in a first-year language classroom at the college level, in which images and text were scrutinized for their representation of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, socioeconomic class, age, and disability, in an effort to verify whether cultural content promoted “intercultural awareness and reflective thinking” (Weninger & Kiss, 2015, p. 51). While the textbook may largely determine instructional content, faculty can engage students in a c...
The teaching of culture is often at risk of being detached from the teaching of language, on the ... more The teaching of culture is often at risk of being detached from the teaching of language, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of presenting cultural content free of a critical reflection on both the target culture(s) and one own’s. Byram has debunked arguments that limited linguistic proficiency prevents comprehensive and critical approaches to culture and advocated that the teaching of culture should be intertwined with the teaching of language. At the same time, a critical engagement with cultural content is key to respond to stereotypical views of the target culture and to promote critical skills transferable across disciplines and contexts. This paper, expanding previous scholarship on the pedagogical use of commercials for the teaching of Italian, provides a framework for critical engagement with cultural content via the example of a project-based learning unit in which lower Intermediate students of Italian analyzed commercials in order to reflect on the Italian and Ameri...
Abstract—This paper provides an overview of the methods adopted in researching the process of wri... more Abstract—This paper provides an overview of the methods adopted in researching the process of writing in a foreign and second language. Cognitively-informed research tends to adopt verbal protocols as a primary method of investigation. In contrast, sociocultural theoretical frameworks typically focus on collaborative writing tasks to elicit data. This overview argues for the need to adopt methods consistent with a sociocultural perspective in studying individual writing tasks. Index Terms—foreign language writers, verbal protocols of writing, concurrent verbal protocols, collaborative writing, sociocultural study of foreign language writing In studying the processes of writers, a tension exists between process and product. Typically document analysis and analytic scores are used to explore questions of product. In this paper the author will draw from research to identify how researchers have studied process to better understand what happens during foreign language writing and to det...
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2015
This paper provides an overview of the methods adopted in researching the process of writing in a... more This paper provides an overview of the methods adopted in researching the process of writing in a foreign and second language. Cognitively-informed research tends to adopt verbal protocols as a primary method of investigation. In contrast, sociocultural theoretical frameworks typically focus on collaborative writing tasks to elicit data. This overview argues for the need to adopt methods consistent with a sociocultural perspective in studying individual writing tasks.
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2015
This paper provides an overview of the methods adopted in researching the process of writing in a... more This paper provides an overview of the methods adopted in researching the process of writing in a foreign and second language. Cognitively-informed research tends to adopt verbal protocols as a primary method of investigation. In contrast, sociocultural theoretical frameworks typically focus on collaborative writing tasks to elicit data. This overview argues for the need to adopt methods consistent with a sociocultural perspective in studying individual writing tasks.
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2015
This paper provides an overview of the methods adopted in researching the process of writing in a... more This paper provides an overview of the methods adopted in researching the process of writing in a foreign and second language. Cognitively-informed research tends to adopt verbal protocols as a primary method of investigation. In contrast, sociocultural theoretical frameworks typically focus on collaborative writing tasks to elicit data. This overview argues for the need to adopt methods consistent with a sociocultural perspective in studying individual writing tasks.
The Journal of Language and Teaching Technology , 2018
The teaching of culture is often at risk of being detached from the teaching of language, on the ... more The teaching of culture is often at risk of being detached from the teaching of language, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of presenting cultural content free of a critical reflection on both the target culture(s) and one own's. Byram has debunked arguments that limited linguistic proficiency prevents comprehensive and critical approaches to culture and advocated that the teaching of culture should be intertwined with the teaching of language. At the same time, a critical engagement with cultural content is key to respond to stereotypical views of the target culture and to promote critical skills transferable across disciplines and contexts. This paper, expanding previous scholarship on the pedagogical use of commercials for the teaching of Italian, provides a framework for critical engagement with cultural content via the example of a project-based learning unit in which lower Intermediate students of Italian analyzed commercials in order to reflect on the Italian and American cultures and their representations. The unit: integrates the study of commercials within a curricular progression that prepares the learners with the necessary linguistic tools to complete the task; requires pair of students to conduct a contrastive analysis of two commercials of the same Italian or American product, developed for the Italian and U.S. markets (for they offer portraits of italianità or Americanness that differ as they cater to a native or to a foreign audience); and, through a collaborative inductive approach, includes recursive whole-class discussions where the instructor poses questions aimed at facing the implications of the observed representations. This process provides affordances to gain a nuanced, complex, and critical reflection, far from simplistic stereotypical views.
TILCA Journal - Teaching Italian Language and Culture Annual (Special Issue “Innovation in Italian Programs and Pedagogy”, 2018), 2018
This case study followed for six months four undergraduate senior students conducting academic wr... more This case study followed for six months four undergraduate senior students conducting academic writing tasks in more than one language. It investigated, from a sociocultural standpoint, the internal resources that mediated students’ writing (internal mediational tools) and the contextual elements that contributed to shaping these resources. Sources included a prompted electronic journal, in-depth interviews with the students and their instructors, course materials and documents, university-wide documents, text written by the students, and class observations. In-depth qualitative analysis of the data resulted in the identification of four internal mediational tools, each used by at least two of the participants when conducting academic writing tasks across languages: (a) knowledge of audience, (b) cultural knowledge, (c) knowledge of discourse conventions, and (d) experiential lenses. Previous writing instruction, extended time spent abroad, college courses, and family and personal background emerged as major contextual influences that shaped the four internal mediational tools. Analysis of the commonalities and the idiosyncrasies across the four writers lead to a hypothesis that each writer’s internal mediational tools were interconnected and influenced by a complex interaction of diachronic and simultaneous external contextual elements. There were specific indications that knowledge of language may be tied to cultural knowledge and be connected to the consideration of multiple perspectives. In addition, I hypothesized that each student’s internal motives contributed to shape their mediational tools. Only a systemic view that included contextual elements and motives could contribute to account for the unique specificity that the same mediational tool took in each writer.
This paper provides an overview of the methods adopted in researching the process of writing in a... more This paper provides an overview of the methods adopted in researching the process of writing in a foreign and second language. Cognitively-informed research tends to adopt verbal protocols as a primary method of investigation. In contrast, sociocultural theoretical frameworks typically focus on collaborative writing tasks to elicit data. This overview argues for the need to adopt methods consistent with a sociocultural perspective in studying individual writing tasks. Index Terms-foreign language writers, verbal protocols of writing, concurrent verbal protocols, collaborative writing, sociocultural study of foreign language writing
Books by Alessia Valfredini
Diversity, Decolonization and Italian Studies, 2022
will be Open Access under the international licensing Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-... more will be Open Access under the international licensing Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) with a two-year embargo on all articles. Issues and single articles under embargo will still be available respectively on subscription or for a fee.
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Papers by Alessia Valfredini
Books by Alessia Valfredini