As a world language teacher, you might feel caught between “legacy-style”, or isolated vocabulary- and grammar-based approaches, and more modern, proficiency-based instruction. This resource can help you to bridge the gap between these approaches to teaching with small instructional adjustments that have big impact on students’ language proficiency.

Many teachers might wonder why they should change “what’s been working for years,” and understandably so. The process of changing your curriculum and pedagogical approach can be overwhelming. The book supports teachers with both of those very valid concerns by first discussing relevant research and then providing a series of “small steps”: practical, easy-to-use classroom strategies and practices that you can immediately apply with your students.

This is an essential resource for any world language teacher wanting to implement research-based instructional strategies to modernize their classroom.

Erin E. H. Austin is a National Board Certified French teacher, a 2018 NEA Foundation Global Fellow, and the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers' 2023 Teacher of the Year.

Lisa Bartels is a National Board Certified Teacher and the 2023 Teacher of the Year for the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina. She is a veteran teacher with classroom experience on three continents.