Author: Emma Trentman
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New Article: Reimagining Study Abroad
I’m excited to announce that I have a new article out with Tracy Quan and Wenhao Diao, “Returning to Normal?: Reimagining Study Abroad and Langauae Learning for a Sustainable and Equitable Future”. It is in a special issue of the L2 Journal, “Study Abroad During COVID and Beyond”. The L2 Journal is open access, so you should be able to read the entire issue online!
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2023 Planning Setup
Each year, I recalibrate my planning setup slightly, and 2023 is no exception! This year, the notable switch is from an assortment of paper planner to digital planning on my iPad. So, what’s in my 2023 planning line-up?
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We Can Learn Arabic site updates
When we launched the We Can Learn Arabic website in 2020, one of the most exciting aspects was the ability to make regular updates as we test the materials in class. We added new units and made tweaks to the activities in 2020 and 2021. In Summer and Fall 2022, as part of our research […]
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Managing all of the inputs
It’s November, which is my academic corner is one of the most stressful months of the season! In this post I thought I’d tackle a topic that is becoming increasingly challenging for me, managing the sheer number of inputs in my life.
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: Bedtime podcasts
It’s time for another post in the language ideologies in the wild series! This time, I’m excited to report on an instance of a podcast actually questioning dominant language ideologies. The podcast is Be Calm on Ahway Island, which I usually play for my daughter to put her to sleep. The episode is “Articulate Airplanes”.
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Multilingual and Multidialectal Approaches: Setting up a research team
This fall semester I’m launching a new research project, “Multilingual and Multidialectal Approaches in the Arabic Classroom.” Thanks to funding from the Qatar Foundation International, I also have a research team, including undergraduate and graduate students. This means that I’ve spent the bulk of my semester so far setting up this project, so I thought I’d describe that experience here. Hopefully I’ll be able to give more updates throughout the semester!
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Summer Planning
As the semester draws to a close, I’ve been working on my summer plan. I’ve always planned my summer just like any other academic semester–while the schedule, rhythm, and type of work I’m doing may be very different, in some ways I find this makes it even more important to plan. Otherwise, the promise of a wide open schedule will be filled with more things than could ever fit in it, leaving me to wonder where the summer went!
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Critiques of Translanguaging Approaches
Over the past few years, translanguaging as a theoretical framework has risen in popularity (at least in my circles) and this means that critiques of it have also become more vocal, something I definitely noticed attending the recent AAAL Conference. Critique is a necessary part of academic work and theoretical development, so this is important. Personally, I’m always interested in critiques of ideas I feel strongly about (to the extent that I frequently google “critique of ________” just out of curiosity). However, I honestly haven’t found the critiques of translanguaging I’ve encountered compelling, so I thought I would discuss them here.
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Surviving April
Last semester, I wrote about taking the stressful edge off of November, and in my life at least, April is November’s stressful Spring cousin! In addition to the usual almost but not quite the end of the semester exhaustion and duties, plus tax and allergy season, this April brings some extra stress with all the holidays, a time-consuming (but also long-shot) grant application, some work and dance projects coming to fruition, and two long haul dance trips (one of which is our regional qualifiers for nationals). On the bright side, April is apparently also both Scottish American and Arab American heritage month, which is a nice coincidence in my world!
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Reflections on Four Years of Blogging
It’s hard to believe that it’s been just over four years since I started this blog! To celebrate, I’d like to reflect on this experience, as well as share some previous favorite posts, according to visits and to me!