Freedom: Using Familiar Constructs to Cultivate Learners’ Awareness of Diverse Perspectives

The 2014 ACTFL position statement on Global Competence certainly reflects how globalization is affecting the teaching and learning of languages. No longer is the language itself the sole object of study nor is gaining proficiency in the language a sufficient outcome. Instead, teaching a lan­guage today is more about forming respectful and responsible language users who are able to interact across differences and cultures and are critically aware of multiple viewpoints. The language classroom is becoming a site where learners can deconstruct and reconstruct the target culture and their home cultures, honing, in the process, the skills to interact with mem­bers of the target language communities who may have differing perspectives.