Fall 2022 Professional Preparedness Series

As many new university faculty are hired to teach courses not only focused on literature and culture but language classes as well, the Center for Languages and Cultures is offering the Graduate Student Training and Professionalization Series in order to help USC graduate students on the job market highlight their language teaching training and experience. You will be given guidance and individualized attention to help you better frame your pedagogical experience. The Graduate Student Training and Professionalization Series includes:

  • A presentation by Professor Evgeny Dengub as a refresher on key language teaching frameworks In this talk, Professor Dengub will describe key frameworks, and concepts that are part of today’s foreign language acquisition discourse. We will discuss World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and Can-Do Statements, modes of communication, among others. This talk is an ‘orientation’ for assistant lecturers teaching language (especially those looking for a job and working on their application dossier), novice instructors, and everyone who wants to refresh their knowledge of current trends in the language teaching field.

    Recording of the talk
    PPT slides

  • Join us for the conversation with the faculty who have been on hiring committees as well as recently hired USC language faculty, to help give you a sense of what hiring committees are looking for with respect to language teaching.
    Recording

  • We invite you to sign up to participate in mock job interview with faculty from various departments at USC. Each ‘interview’ will last about 15 minutes and you will be interviewed by the ‘committee’ comprised of USC language faculty. Other graduate students will be observing the interviews so that you can learn from each other and get a chance to receive useful feedback.

    Sign up here

  • The purpose of the “teaching statement review” is to help graduate students who are currently seeking academic jobs with language teaching obligations to enhance their teaching philosophy and language teaching experience statements. One (or more) of the language teaching faculty at USC will read your statement and provide individualized feedback based on the current best practices of the foreign language instruction. Teaching statement submission link: https://forms.gle/TKvy1q3YZnswscwn7

    This is an on-going service. You can submit your statement at any point until April 20th, 2023. A faculty member will contact you to discuss your statement at a mutually convenient time.

Questions or Comments? Email Professor Julia Chamberlin at jcchambe@usc.edu

Graduate students training and professionalization committee

Chair: Julia Chamberlain, Master Lecturer (French and Italian), jcchambe@usc.edu
Evgeny Dengub, Professor (Teaching) (Slavic), dengub@usc.edu
Yi-Hsien Liu, Assistant Professor (Teaching) (EALC), yihsienl@usc.edu
Atiyeh Showrai, Master Lecturer (French and Italian), showrai@usc.edu