Many language revitalization programs aimed at teaching Indigenous languages are small, informal efforts with limited time and resources. Even in communities that still have proficient speakers, students in revitalization programs often struggle to gain proficiency in the language. This paper offers an illustration of how one language revitalization program has tried to make teaching more effective by adapting commu-nicative language teaching strategies to be more useful and appropriate for their particular context. Having gained empirical support in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), communicative language teaching emphasizes the importance of rich and meaningful interaction for language learning to take place. “Rich” refers to the availability of target-like input that is not oversimplified. “Meaningful” refers to the type of interaction that takes place in real-life situations that necessitate communi-cation. However, existing research on these topics has largely ignored language revi-talization contexts, where providing learners with rich and meaningful interaction can be particularly challenging. This paper presents strategies for promoting rich and meaningful interaction in instructed language revitalization settings, as demonstrated through teacher practices at a Zapotec revitalization program in San Pablo Macuiltian-guis, Oaxaca, Mexico. The focus is on shifting from Spanish language use to Zapotec language use in specific, everyday social spaces, then supporting interaction within these spaces.National Foreign Language Resource Cente
