A Human Ecological Language Pedagogy

Abstract: In an age now marked by social and cultural supercomplexity, local conflicts with a global reach, and unprecedented levels of regional and global migrations of people and the resulting struggles and suffering, being able to use more than one language can be regarded as an affordance on a global scale, an affordance for the alleviation of suffering in the world through expanded modes of communication among people. In this presentation, based on examples from teaching practice and empirical scholarship I detail what I call a human ecological language pedagogy in which traditional ideas about language and intercultural communicative competence are re-framed as human capabilities; creativity is addressed as an essential curricular feature; and conflict transformation and the fostering of compassion form an integral thread across all levels of language learning.

Bio: Glenn S. Levine is a Professor of German at the University of California, Irvine. At UC Irvine he also serves as the German language program director. He has published widely in applied linguistics and language pedagogy, including numerous articles on the role of the first language in second-language learning and teaching, language use and socialization during study abroad, theoretically and empirically informed approaches to language pedagogy, and issues of language program direction, and language learning of migrants in Germany.