Studio FLTA Alena Shestopalova led an event on Feb. 15 where faculty and teaching assistants in the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures exchanged pedagogical strategies and teaching experiences.

Shestopalova is currently participating in the international Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant Program as an FLTA from Russia. As part of this program, Shestopalova is a pedagogical researcher in the World Languages and Digital Humanities Studio, where she organizes and hosts events to advance. 

Event highlights

The event brought together 16 TAs and coordinators from various language programs, including French (Maria Comsa), Italian (Daniela D'Eugenio, Valentina Morello and Claudia Devich), German (Alexandra Hagen), Spanish (Brenda Magnetti) and Russian. All the TAs already have a spectrum of experiences teaching world languages and cultures; thus, the goal was to bring together the diverse educators to create an environment where all could learn from each other by sharing best practices and experiential data and lessons from the classroom. 

Attendees were split into three different stations, which were designed to discuss how to foster communicative competence, address errors in speaking activities and explore more efficient correction techniques. 

"I'm thrilled with how well the event turned out! I really appreciate how much thought and time WLLC coordinators and TAs put into sharing their experiences and strategies for student success! We covered a lot of issues and materials, from fostering communicative competence to correcting errors effectively."  

In addition to leading pedagogical events at the WLDH Studio,Shestopalova hosts the bi-weekly Russian conversation table "The Nose," which takes place from 5-6 p.m. on Thursday at the studio in J.B. Hunt Center for Excellence, room 207. The next meeting will be on Feb. 22, and it will explore nonverbal communication being a part of contemporary Russian culture.