Digital Recording Platforms and Integrated Performance Assessments in Second/Foreign Language Learning

The teaching and learning of a new language can be daunting for both instructors and learners. Second/foreign language teachers must overcome a multitude of impediments in which to bring students to higher levels of language learning. Research using digital voice recording software indicates that by integrating such technology into the curriculum, there are multiple benefits for both instructors and students. In this chapter, the author discusses the challenges language teachers face and then outlines six free digital voice recorder options that are available to teachers. Afterward, the author advances a series of curricular and procedural considerations for the integration of digital voice recordings in the language-learning classroom before discussing findings from studies focused on the use of digital recordings for educational purposes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of best practices using digital voice recordings for integrated performance assessments and a discussion of new avenues for future research

Identifiable challenges as global complexities: globalization, gender violence, and statelessness

Discourses on globalization and violence often fall short on understanding the gender aspects of different forms of violence. This is particularly the case for stateless women and girls, faced with the existing institutionalized systems of social and legal protection which do not account for them, making them almost invisible. Subsequently, this contribution claims that the assessment of vulnerability, and likely responses, are linked to power and identity at the global levels. Furthermore, such responses are shaped by the structure of agency and associated power structures in society. Unequal power structures are likely to lead to unequal patterns of neglect, or perverse responses that protect entrenched interests aligned with existing structures of identity or influence. In this way, the “vulnerability of stateless identity” can itself be a source of heightened anxiety and fear