JOSH PRADA
heritage language program direction
I have worked on the design, development and direction of two Spanish programs for heritage/native speakers in two quite different contexts within the US: West Texas and Central Indiana, and served as consultant in the development of several others (including the one at IU Bloomington). My work in West Texas was conducted between 2014 and 2018, while I was a PhD student at Texas Tech University and served as program coordinator. I was fortunate to work very closely with my mentor, Dr Diego Pascual y Cabo (now at the University of Florida), who at the time was the program director. Among other things, I coordinated meetings, (re)designed syllabi, developed activity banks and materials, and played an important part in the launching of the program, ensuring high recruitment. I take pride in having contributed to the program's move from a one-course structure (with one section open at a time) to 4 courses with multiple sections fully enrolled any given semester. Moreover, I directed the service-learning program for heritage speakers, and played a central role in its design and implementation. The service-learning program connected over 70 students from the Heritage Program with three local elementary schools through a series of language-arts workshops evolving around the scope of STEM, performance, and writing.
A few months before graduating in May 2018, I accepted my current job at Indiana University-Indianapolis. Since then, I've been working very closely with the Latinx/Hispanic student community, both at the undergraduate and the graduate levels. At the undergraduate level, my goal was to create course offerings for heritage/native speakers that reflected best practices in the field while attending to individual needs of our students in the US Midwest. I began teaching one composition-intensive course (with 12 students) which tripled in size. Our students typically declare Spanish as a minor or major, and have great success in pursuing internships (nationally and internationally), publishing their work, and becoming strong advocates of bi-/multilingualism in the community. My goal is to support first-generation Latinx/Hispanic students as they succeed, not only in their language studies, but holistically, as professionals and as 21st century citizens.
Alongside my work as program developer and administrator, I teach courses at the undergraduate and the graduate levels on the IUPUI campus. These courses fall into three strands: the teaching and learning of languages (educational linguistics), the theories underpinning how languages are acquired at different stages in life (language acquisition), and the array of forms languages take in different geopolitical spaces, the speakers who use them, and the nature of this body of knowledge (sociolinguistics).
My students come from all walks of life. My undergraduate students are often first-generation, multilingual, and culturally diverse. They bring a wonderful breadth of experiences and abilities to our classroom, and it's always exciting to see them become stronger, more critical multilingual communicators towards the end of the semester. My graduate students also come from a variety of backgrounds. Some of them are practicing teachers in the K-12 and college systems who want to become stronger teacher, while some others come with the intention of becoming familiar with how language teaching and learning works, as they prepare to enter the teaching workforce. The remaining ones have an interest in research and seek to explore (and eventually contribute to) the research literature. I enjoy working and collaborating with all of them in different projects.
Courses I regularly teach at Indiana University (Indianapolis) include:
Second language acquisition of Spanish (Graduate)
Methods for teaching college Spanish (Graduate)
Teaching practicum in Language (Graduate)
Sociolinguistics for Education (Graduate)
Spanish as a heritage language (Graduate)
Applied linguistics (undergraduate)
Bilingualism in the US (undergraduate)
Spanish Composition for Heritage/Native Speakers (undergraduate)
Intro to Spanish Language for heritage speakers (undergraduate)
Additionally, I often teach around the US and internationally, give invited lectures and provide training opportunities in other universities, such as The University of Winsconsin-Whitewater (US), Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Spain) - where I am Visiting Professor in Heritage Language Education, and the Universities of Groningen (The Netherlands) and Strasbourgh (France) where I was an ERASMUS MUNDUS visiting scholar in multilingualism in 2022. Being able to collaborate with friends and colleagues from other institutions and advance their students' understanding and capabilities to work with minoritized and racialized multilinguals is nothing short of a privilege.
A few months before graduating in May 2018, I accepted my current job at Indiana University-Indianapolis. Since then, I've been working very closely with the Latinx/Hispanic student community, both at the undergraduate and the graduate levels. At the undergraduate level, my goal was to create course offerings for heritage/native speakers that reflected best practices in the field while attending to individual needs of our students in the US Midwest. I began teaching one composition-intensive course (with 12 students) which tripled in size. Our students typically declare Spanish as a minor or major, and have great success in pursuing internships (nationally and internationally), publishing their work, and becoming strong advocates of bi-/multilingualism in the community. My goal is to support first-generation Latinx/Hispanic students as they succeed, not only in their language studies, but holistically, as professionals and as 21st century citizens.
Alongside my work as program developer and administrator, I teach courses at the undergraduate and the graduate levels on the IUPUI campus. These courses fall into three strands: the teaching and learning of languages (educational linguistics), the theories underpinning how languages are acquired at different stages in life (language acquisition), and the array of forms languages take in different geopolitical spaces, the speakers who use them, and the nature of this body of knowledge (sociolinguistics).
My students come from all walks of life. My undergraduate students are often first-generation, multilingual, and culturally diverse. They bring a wonderful breadth of experiences and abilities to our classroom, and it's always exciting to see them become stronger, more critical multilingual communicators towards the end of the semester. My graduate students also come from a variety of backgrounds. Some of them are practicing teachers in the K-12 and college systems who want to become stronger teacher, while some others come with the intention of becoming familiar with how language teaching and learning works, as they prepare to enter the teaching workforce. The remaining ones have an interest in research and seek to explore (and eventually contribute to) the research literature. I enjoy working and collaborating with all of them in different projects.
Courses I regularly teach at Indiana University (Indianapolis) include:
Second language acquisition of Spanish (Graduate)
Methods for teaching college Spanish (Graduate)
Teaching practicum in Language (Graduate)
Sociolinguistics for Education (Graduate)
Spanish as a heritage language (Graduate)
Applied linguistics (undergraduate)
Bilingualism in the US (undergraduate)
Spanish Composition for Heritage/Native Speakers (undergraduate)
Intro to Spanish Language for heritage speakers (undergraduate)
Additionally, I often teach around the US and internationally, give invited lectures and provide training opportunities in other universities, such as The University of Winsconsin-Whitewater (US), Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Spain) - where I am Visiting Professor in Heritage Language Education, and the Universities of Groningen (The Netherlands) and Strasbourgh (France) where I was an ERASMUS MUNDUS visiting scholar in multilingualism in 2022. Being able to collaborate with friends and colleagues from other institutions and advance their students' understanding and capabilities to work with minoritized and racialized multilinguals is nothing short of a privilege.
