FREE WEBINAR FOR SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Cross Cultural Communities through the Digital Dialect Archive

As part of an interdisciplinary team-teaching project that explored new ways of using drama in language classes, students from diverse backgrounds came together to work on a mutually beneficial project involving the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA). English language learners at universities in the United States are often isolated from their American counterparts and aren’t provided enough opportunities for meaningful connections. This project aimed to foster intercultural communities, to offer English language learners authentic opportunities for language use, and to provide acting students the chance to study culture and dialect hand-in-hand. Acting students must learn to perform dialects authentically, which requires the ability to gather and analyze source material, and to learn about the cultural context of dialects. These drama students were trained in a dialect collection and analysis technique and then assigned partners from English language classes. Using readily available hardware and free software, they recorded, analyzed, and transcribed these conversations. The resulting data has been published online to IDEA. This is a process that can be replicated even in the absence of drama students.

• Presenters: Deric McNish (Michigan State University) and Carmela Romano Gillette (University of Michigan)
• Date: Thursday, September 26, 2019
• Time: 12:00pm PST / 1:00pm MST / 2:00pm CST / 3:00pm EST
• Webinar Duration – 1 hour

Webinar Registration HERE