ACADEMIC SERVICE LEARNING EXPERIENCES IN ENHANCING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

This paper would propose ideas and projects fostering academic service learning experiences in the foreign language classroom, which I personally have implemented in my intermediate level Italian classes and in some of my upper level grammar courses for the past three years.

Academic service learning engages students in some form of community service and uses that service as a means of reinforcing course objectives. This unique form of education is perhaps less implemented in the foreign language classroom than in other disciplines. In my career in teaching Italian and Spanish that spans almost two decades, I have only during the last three years encouraged my students to participate in some community service while enrolled in my Italian classes, from the intermediate level to the advanced level. Each year I have a greater number of students participating in these extracurricular activities, though I have yet to render this option mandatory in my classes.

In my proposed session, I intend to demonstrate how service learning has enhanced the productivity, interest, and retention of foreign language students, as they are engaged in and outside the classroom. Community service activities that will be shared during the presentation vary between service learning activities that implemented an active use of the language as well as those activities where cultural influences were more widley emphasized and the target language was primarily used as a means of expressing reflections relevant to the activity in the classroom.