Multimodal Approaches for Heritage and Second Language Instructor Training

Abstract

This piece explores the need to provide better training to graduate student instructors by first conducting a needs analysis of current graduate students and recent graduate students regarding their conceptualizations of writing, multiliteracies, and second (L2) and heritage language (HL) pedagogies. Based on this survey, it is evident that with just one teaching methods course as the typical training graduate student instructors receive it behooves us to implement innovative pedagogy in other ways to develop graduate students’ abilities to navigate new technological tools and reconsider how they can teach writing in the L2/HL courses. Based on previous research as well as practical experience, this paper discusses several approaches for training and preparing graduate students to reconsider their preconceived notions of what it means to learn to write in an L2 or HL to include more focus on multiliteracies and technological skills to prepare students for 21st century communication.

Keywords

• graduate student training
• second language writing
• heritage language writing
• Spanish as a heritage language
• Spanish as a second language
• multiliteracies